Podcast: What US midterms tell us about the state of US democracy

TRANSCRIPT: What US midterms tell us about the state of US democracy

Tamara Keith:

It is shocking just how polarized people are, how much suspicion they have for people from the other party, how much they're like, "Oh, well, I used to be able to vote for someone from the other party, but now I couldn't dare do that. Not this cycle." Well, next cycle, it's going to be the same thing.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello, and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and on this episode, we are taking stock of the midterms. 2022 had all the signs of a Republican rout, but Democratic candidates in the Congressional and Governor's races outperformed expectations. The Senate majority will stay blue, while Republicans look likely to clinch the slimmest of majorities in the House of Representatives. It's an outcome no one predicted, including myself, I don't mind at all admitting. To make sense of it all and to look at the road ahead to 2024 for both parties and the country, I'm joined by NPR White House Correspondent, Tamara Keith. Let's get to it.

Annluncer:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, places clients' needs first by providing responsive, relevant, and customized solutions. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.

As the world industrialized, nature suffered. Conservation has been dominated by Western voices, but in Africa, home to 30% of the world's biodiversity, African conservationists blaze a new path forward. On Africa Forward, a podcast supported by African Wildlife Foundation and produced by FP Studios, hear about green infrastructure, Africa's tremendous biodiversity, and how African-led conservation may save endangered species and the planet. Listen to season two of Africa Forward wherever you get your podcasts.

Ian Bremmer:

Tamara Keith, thanks so much for joining us on GZERO World.

Tamara Keith:

Glad to be with you.

Ian Bremmer:

So this is our midterm show, and I guess I want to start with the single thing that surprised you the most, as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the run-up. If we could just teleport you from a couple weeks ago to right now, the one thing that previous Tamara would say, "No, that wasn't going to happen," is what?

Tamara Keith:

Well, I was very uncomfortable with my gut instincts heading into this election, because it just felt like there were so many crosscurrents, I didn't know which of my gut instincts to trust. So, I think that I would've thought that by a week after the election, we would've known with pretty great certainty the balance of power in the House. I think I would've thought with pretty great certainty that the leadership would be pretty easily solved in the House and the Senate, but instead there it's taken a long time, not because we were surprised that it would take a long time for votes to be tallied in California and Oregon, but because it matters, for the balance of power, what those votes show.

Ian Bremmer:

And the House certainly was where everyone ... It was just a question of how big the Republican win would be-

Tamara Keith:

Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

... not a matter of their holding on for the slimmest of potential margins. What is the principle reason for that? I hear so many different takes, whether it's, "Oh, independents really swung for Republicans. It's candidate quality. The democracy message really mattered. Young people and women showed up." Rank, if you would, by priority, what are the reasons you think that it ended up being so close?

Tamara Keith:

Well, and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I have all the answers because I think the answer is, all of the above in various quantities. I think absolutely, as I was out interviewing voters, even as they said that their top issue was inflation, what was motivating them to vote in many cases and ... I spent a fair bit of time in a suburban swing district outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, so a purple district, a swing area. And repeatedly, voters told me that abortion was what was driving them to vote, that democracy issues were driving them to vote, and these weren't all the hard-line Democrats who were saying that. So, I think that the crossovers, the ticket-splitters, the people who had reservations with some of the candidates are the reason for this. And as you say, independents in a midterm year usually go against the party of power, and that's not what happened this time.

Ian Bremmer:

So, when I think back on the Governor Youngkin race, when one of the reasons he did so well and surprised so many people is because he was able to effectively paint the Democrats by their most radical messages, by the identity politics issues that weren't going to drive people to vote. Were the Democrats able in a lot of these races to paint the Republicans by their most radical messages, by the election denialism, which is not everybody in the Republican Party, but you see it in the extremes, paint them by the, "No abortions are going to be allowed for you", which is also not the mainstream Republican position, but certainly the extremists of the GOP were pushing that. Is that basically what you're saying happened?

Tamara Keith:

Yeah, more or less. I mean, as we talk about candidate quality, go back to that, there really were quite a few Republican candidates who had positions that were out of line with the mainstream. Typically, in an election, the only people motivated by abortion as an issue are hardcore Republicans and conservatives who want to ban abortion. Well, this year, they got what they wanted from the Supreme Court, and then all of a sudden, voters who weren't normally motivated by this were highly motivated by it. And the conversation wasn't about limits on ... It wasn't about what limits on abortion Democrats would accept or want, it was about what limits on abortion Republicans wanted, what exceptions they would even allow.

And going back to this race that I covered in North Carolina, the Republican candidate campaigned as a MAGA warrior. He said abortion was a genocide, and he suggested that there should be panels of people who decide what exceptions, which patients, which women should get an exception to a ban on abortion. That is out of line with the mainstream of the American public. If you look at the polling, the mainstream of the American public wants some amount of legal and available abortion, especially in the case of medical need, and there were many candidates up and down the ballot who were out of line with that.

Ian Bremmer:

The mainstream American public is a bell curve on abortion. It's 13, 15 weeks. It's safe, it's legal, it's rare. That's not where these races were at all.

Tamara Keith:

Right, and if Republicans were talking about abortion in this year, it was not good for them, because you just ended up with a lot of really easy-to-cut campaign ads for Democrats.

Ian Bremmer:

This sort of is ... In a sense, it brings me back to what you were saying at the beginning that usually, incumbents have a problem. But Republicans essentially became incumbents on abortion because they controlled the judiciary, in the sense that for 50 years, they were able to run as opposition on abortion, and suddenly they had to run as if they were the policymakers on abortion. And that put them in a really difficult spot.

Tamara Keith:

It certainly did. And the reality is that in divided government, no national ban on abortion was going to be passed or signed, certainly. It wasn't going to become law.

Ian Bremmer:

Right.

Tamara Keith:

And President Biden has now admitted that it's pretty unlikely that the numbers exist to codify Roe, but there were a lot of Democratic candidates that were running on codifying Roe, and Roe is not a policy of unlimited abortion. It's not the sort of caricature that Republicans would paint about the sort of extreme Democratic position. And Democrats did an incredibly good job of not actually talking about what limits they wanted, other than to say they wanted to codify Roe.

Ian Bremmer:

So as it looks now, the House would appear to be about flip to the Republicans, a very, very narrow majority. But nonetheless, in red districts across the country, a lot of strongly MAGA candidates did win. What do you think that means? What does that look like for governance in the United States for the second half of the Biden administration?

Tamara Keith:

I think that there's not going to be a huge amount of brand-new policy-making that happens in the next two years. And often, in the second two years of a president's term, not a whole heck of a lot happens. But certainly what this does do is give President Biden a foil. When his agenda isn't getting through, no longer does he have to blame his own party. He can blame the other guys for blocking his agenda. I think that it's going to be incredibly difficult for ...

It was not easy for Nancy Pelosi to lead the House with the narrow majority that Democrats had in the last two years. That was not easy, and she is one of the most skilled tacticians of governance that you could imagine. It is not going to be easy to get the Republican conference to do governing stuff. I think that you will see ... They'll probably have a fairly easy time passing messaging bills, but anything that would have a chance of moving in the Senate or anything that would have a chance of actually getting to the president's desk, I mean, we're probably talking about post offices, and naming post offices, naming government buildings. I can't see a lot of big things happening.

That said, no matter what the balance of power in Congress, they have to figure out how to fund the government. And that is going to be a heavy lift, especially because there are many members of the House Republican Conference who have never voted for a budget, and don't intend to start.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, do we think that a narrowly Republican-led House is one that will do its damnedest to turn the tables on the Biden administration, proceed with massive amounts of investigations, show trials, even impeachments? Turnabout is fair play from that perspective, or no, because it's too narrow and you can't get everyone on board?

Tamara Keith:

I'm not sure. I think we need to see how the leadership elections shake out, need to see just how narrow that majority is. Certainly, they are going to be under pressure from their base to deliver something. Their voters want something to show for it. And certainly, you have members of Congress on the Republican side who have serious things that they want to investigate, and then you have members of Congress on the Republican side who have less serious things that they want to investigate. It's clear that President Biden is hoping they overreach, and overreach in the same way that Newt Gingrich's investigations were felt to have overreached that led to his ultimate ouster. I don't know. I don't know how far they will go, but I do have fond memories of past Republican Congresses making life pretty miserable for the Obama administration, and covering those sorts of investigations.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, in the aftermath of the midterms, the names that you hear as the most powerful individuals are governors. We hear a lot about DeSantis. We hear a lot about Abbott. We hear a lot about Whitmire. We hear a lot about Newsom, right? I mean, these are people with a lot of executive authority over significant economies in their own rights, significant populations, and they performed really well as incumbents. Does that change how you think about American democracy? Does it make it more decentralized? Does it change how you think about the 2024 races? Give me your thoughts.

Tamara Keith:

And add Jared Polis, the Governor of Colorado-

Ian Bremmer:

Colorado, yup, definitely.

Tamara Keith:

... to the list of Democratic governors who won easily, and then-

Ian Bremmer:

And Kemp, Brian Kemp in Georgia, frankly. Yeah.

Tamara Keith:

Exactly. Brian Kemp got more-

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, Stacey Abrams got thumped pretty hard this time around, right?

Tamara Keith:

Yeah. And part of what that says is that people like their governors, and it is perceived as a different role than a senator or president.

What does it mean for 2024? Certainly, Ron DeSantis' star was already rising. There was no question about that. As I was out interviewing voters, they would bring his name up unprompted. He has done an incredibly good job of boggling liberal tears, or whatever you want to call the ability to rile up the left and garner a ton of attention along the way. He's done a really good job of that. And as a result, he's sort of, in addition to being a very large state governor whose state is doing fairly well, he also is just a conservative celebrity in the way that could be really helpful. And there are polls that show him certainly gaining on Trump. So his star is rising, that's for sure.

What does it mean for 2024? He's young. He was just reelected governor. He probably, of anyone, has the best chance of beating Trump in a primary, but the question is whether anyone has a chance of beating Trump in a primary. And there were a lot of people of people who thought that they could in 2015 and they couldn't in 2015/2016.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, I mean, in a very polarized environment, you hear from a lot of serious Democrats. They look at DeSantis and they try to paint him with the Trump brush and say, "This guy is a young Trump. This guy is going to be an authoritarian. He is going to be an election denier." Is that fair?

Tamara Keith:

That's a good question, and I don't know how he would govern if he were elected president. I do know that he is young, and he is far more disciplined than Trump. So, if he has policy goals that he wants to achieve, he would be more likely to figure out how to pull the levers of government to make it happen. He's not going to be somebody that tweets in the middle of the night some idea and then has his administration figuring it out, how to do it on the back end. He would figure it out on the front end, plot it out, and then announce it, which would potentially increase his potential for success. Every person is different. I don't think that he has been tested on truly whether he would accept the results of his own election, for instance, because he's won.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, when you look at the Republican Party, and this is clearly a moving target, but as of right now, is the Republican Party still a MAGA party? Is it still Trump's party? Those are two different questions.

Tamara Keith:

Right. Those are different questions. I think that there are also different ways to answer it. Are you talking about the Party? Are you talking about the elected officials? Are you talking about the establishment? Or are you talking about the voters?

Ian Bremmer:

To start, let's talk about the Party and let's talk about what happens in 2024, because of course, that's what's going to matter the most for the direction of the Party.

Tamara Keith:

Right, so here's what I would say is that there are a lot of voters who I talk to who said that they'd rather somebody other than Trump be the nominee, but if Trump is the nominee, they'll vote for him. I mean, Bill Barr, the former Attorney General, who has almost nothing good to say about the president he served, he said he'd vote for Trump if he was the nominee. There are very few Republicans who would go so far as to say, "Well, if democracy is on the line, I will vote for a Democrat." There just aren't that many, because we are hyperpolarized.

Ian Bremmer:

And they'll believe it, anyway.

Tamara Keith:

Yeah. Well, I think that a lot of Republican voters believe that democracy is on the line, and that Joe Biden is the problem.

And they believe it firmly, and it shows up in the polls and it shows up in interviews. They're deeply concerned. So, I guess what I would say is, I think we have to wait and see how things play out.

Certainly, absolutely, certainly there are large elements of the Republican Party, large elements of the House of Representatives that will be coming in, large elements of the Senate who are very MAGA, whether they are Trump MAGA or not, whether they think Trump makes the right decisions or not, the goals and the policies. And even more importantly than that, I think the sort of brashness and approach and lack of appreciation for the way things have worked, and that's not a bad thing from where they come from and where their voters come from. I think there's just a lot of people in the Republican Party who don't see themselves going back to the nice, polite Mitch McConnell, Bob Dole Republican Party.

Ian Bremmer:

We are too far down the road to take much solace in saying, "Okay, you just had a more normalized midterm election. A lot of the election deniers among governors, Secretary of State positions, didn't win. Now, we can take a breath." The divisions and the polarization in US politics are going to persist well beyond these midterms.

Tamara Keith:

You know, you see the polarization in polls, but then going out and talking to real people, it is shocking just how polarized people are, how much suspicion they have for people from the other party. How much they're like, "Oh, well, I used to be able to vote for someone from the other party, but now I couldn't dare do that, not this cycle." Well, next cycle, it's going to be the same thing. There is a huge amount of polarization, and yeah, I don't exactly know how that gets better. I don't think that polarization gets better just by electing Democrats, even though I think the president seemed to imply that, "Oh, we're on a better course now. We've elected more Democrats. It wasn't a Republican wave."

I do think that the lack of success of election deniers means that, especially running for Secretary of State positions and certain governorships around the country, means that the guardrails that held in 2020 will be there again. And those guardrails held on by a thread, but those guardrails held. I think one of the more reassuring things about the last week or so is that any number of people who denied the results of the 2020 election have accepted the results of the 2022 election, even when they lost, and that is an encouraging sign for democracy. I mean, this is one of the most basic core things in elections, and not something that any of us a few years ago would've thought would even be a concern, but people have to concede. That's part of our system.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, before we go, I haven't asked you at all about President Biden. Of course, now, with two years under his belt, a strong midterm response better than most would have expected, as well as a number of legislative accomplishments he can point to, the guy is 80. I mean, if he wanted to retire after one term and spend some time with his grandkids, very few people would suggest that that would be inappropriate. Do you think it is significantly more likely that he now seeds the way for an open Democratic primary and says he's not going to run again?

Tamara Keith:

Do I think it is significantly more likely? No. He is going to have some family conversations, as he did several years ago. He's going to be making some big decisions. I don't think that he thinks he's done. He talks a lot about fate, and he knows that he's 80 years old, and he knows that every day is a blessing, at a certain point in your life. And yet, he feels strongly that he's still in the game, and that he beat Trump once, and that he is the best person to beat Trump again.

Now, maybe he'll have a conversation with his family and that'll change. But two years ago when he was saying this, I thought that he was just doing this to avoid being a lame duck early in his presidency. But he's still saying all of these things, and his team has been preparing for a run, because you have to prepare. But he has to make a decision soon, because the Democratic bench, the president has a tendency to block the sun, and makes it really hard for people to fathom who might be on that bench. Though, as we talked about earlier, there are several governors who just had pretty impressive reelections.

Ian Bremmer:

So Tamara Keith, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That is the message I'm getting, and I really appreciate having you on.

Tamara Keith:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Like what you've heard? Come check us out at gzeromedia.com, and sign up for our newsletter, Signal.

Announcer:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, places clients' needs first by providing responsive, relevant, and customized solutions. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.

As the world industrialized, nature suffered. Conservation has been dominated by Western voices, but in Africa, home to 30% of the world's biodiversity, African conservationists blaze a new path forward. On Africa Forward, a podcast supported by African Wildlife Foundation and produced by FP Studios, hear about green infrastructure, Africa's tremendous biodiversity, and how African-led conservation may save endangered species and the planet. Listen to season two of Africa Forward wherever you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.