(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



The Downballot: Will McCarthy’s fall affect battle for House? 538’s Nathaniel Rakich (transcript) [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-10-05  

It’s been an unprecedented week in politics as (now former) Speaker Kevin McCarthy was booted out of the Speaker’s chair. 538’s Nathaniel Rakich joins us to break down the fallout, including how it might affect the 2024 race for the House and if McCarthy might resign and trigger a special election for his Congressional seat. We also talk about the good special election trends for Democrats this year and how to incorporate polling into your thinking about elections.

x Embedded Content

Host David Beard and guest host Joe Sudbay also cover the passing of California Senator Dianne Feinstein and her appointed replacement, EMILY’s List’s Laphonza Butler. They also discuss the return of a number of 2022 GOP losers, including Arizona’s Kari Lake, Michigan’s James Craig, and Ohio’s J.R. Majewski, all of whom are announcing new campaigns for 2024.Subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts to make sure you never miss a show—new episodes every Thursday! You'll find a transcript of this week's episode right here by noon Eastern time.

Transcript lightly edited for clarity.

David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.

Joe Sudbay: I'm Joe Sudbay. I'm filling in again this week while David Nir is on vacation. I host a show on SiriusXM Progress called “State of the States” that deals with many of the same issues as “The Downballot,” and I'm really excited to be here with you again, David Beard.

Beard: Yes, and if you haven't heard, “The Downballot” is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. And if you haven't, of course, please subscribe to “The Downballot” on Apple Podcasts. Leave us a five-star rating and review. That's very helpful for the podcast going forward.

This week, lots of news. Obviously, we keep saying that, but things keep happening! Of course, the biggest news was in the U.S. House where Kevin McCarthy is no longer speaker. We're going to talk about that with our guest, Nathaniel Rakich from FiveThirtyEight. We're going to look at what that might do for the Congress for the rest of the term, what that means for 2024, what that means for Kevin McCarthy's own seat. We're also going to talk to him about special elections and how that's been looking. We're going to talk to him a little bit about polls and why people take the wrong things from polls sometimes as we saw in 2022.

But before we get to that interview, we've got some other big news to highlight. Of course, we've got to talk about California Senate, where one of the longest-serving female senators, Dianne Feinstein, passed away, and we have a new appointed senator, Laphonza Butler. And then we've got to talk about some new Republican entrants who were losers in 2022 who are for another round, including Kari Lake in Arizona and including J.R. Majewski, who's back yet again in Ohio. And of course, James Craig, who got kicked off the ballot in 2022 so he decided to come back for 2024, up in Michigan Senate. So we've got a jam-packed show for you, and stick with us. We'll get started right after this.

Well, it has certainly been a week in terms of politics that's felt like a year at some points. Obviously, the biggest news overwhelming everything is the Speakership now being vacant, with everything that's going on with Kevin McCarthy. And we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about how that plays into 2024, but we're going to hold that for our guest — our interview with Nathaniel Rakich from FiveThirtyEight, so we're going to have a great discussion with him about that and some other things.

So we're going to talk about some of the other key stories of the week first, and we're going to start with the story that would have led everything for the week, if not for everything else, which is the passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein, obviously the longest-serving female senator in history, somebody who's been out on the political stage for a very long time. Some clear troubles in recent years that everyone has seen that made for a bit of a sad ending as Democrats in the Senate have had to struggle with her absences and her illnesses. But, with the news of her passing late last week, there was an opportunity for California Governor Gavin Newsom to appoint a senator to serve for the remainder of Senator Feinstein's term. That's through the end of next year.

And the person that he chose was Laphonza Butler, not a name that was particularly well known, honestly, either among the public or in California. She's a longtime operative. She was the head of EMILY’s List, which is one of the largest political organizations that's dedicated to electing Democratic pro-choice women across the country. And so she certainly is well-known in political circles, but maybe not so much publicly. Obviously now as a senator, she'll get a big chance to rectify that and introduce herself to California voters. Of course, a big outstanding question is whether or not she'll run for a full term after what she's currently been appointed to.

Sudbay: Yeah, I have to say it was quite a surprise Sunday evening, if we're online, and so many of us were, when we saw this announcement. And people were madly Googling Laphonza Butler, people outside of California politics really, who knew her from her days as a union organizer and an advisor to then-Senator, now-Vice President Kamala Harris. Everyone was speculating. We've been seeing speculation for months, David, about what would happen if Governor Newsom got the opportunity. There are, of course, three prominent candidates running for Senate, all Democrats — Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and Adam Schiff, three members of Congress. And the Governor had sort of indicated he wanted to pick someone outside of those three, and of course that's what he did. So yeah, it was quite a surprise. I have to say, it's a milestone. She's the third Black female senator in the history of the United States in the year 2023. That's pretty amazing that that's still the number.

The other thing is, she makes the third member of the Senate LGBTQ Caucus. She's married to a woman, and I find that very exciting. I will say, David, that I hope she is more of a senator on the Tammy Baldwin side of the LGBT caucus than the other member of that caucus in the Senate, Kyrsten Sinema, who's now an independent. So I think it was a milestone and a historic appointment.

Beard: I think if our baseline is better than Kyrsten Sinema, I think she will sail over that with flying colors if nothing else. And yeah, I think she's certainly a historic appointment. Hopefully, and as we expect, the number of black women in the Senate will increase. We of course have Lisa Blunt Rochester, who's the strong favorite for the Delaware open Senate seat. Angela Alsobrooks is probably the favorite — that's a competitive primary, but I think probably the favorite for the open Maryland Senate seat, so we could see a good jump in the number of Black women serving in the Senate, which would be great. But in the meantime, yeah, Laphonza Butler is now the sole black woman in the Senate, assuming you're not counting, of course, Kamala Harris who presides over the Senate but is no longer a senator.

But yeah, I do think the big question in terms of 2024 is: will she run for a full term? Governor Newsom had originally said that the person that he selected would not run for a full term and then walked that back in the days after Senator Feinstein's passing. Clearly, when he was going through the process of appointing somebody, my guess is there might've been some reluctance among people to accept a nomination with that restriction in place. And so Butler, obviously, she could have done whatever she wanted either way, but now Newsom has said whoever he appointed should have the right to run if they so choose, then he appointed Butler. So Butler will have an opportunity to make that decision for herself. Certainly, incumbency can be a big boost. On the other hand, Schiff, Porter, and Lee, they've been running for months. They have a lot of money in some cases. So I think it's by no means guaranteed, but it certainly would shake up the Senate race.

Sudbay: Yeah, it is by no means guaranteed, and it's hard. Look, that's an expensive state. That's an understatement, as you know. And now Senator Butler, it's interesting, because she doesn't have a lot of name recognition, and there were some people who were really scratching their heads. At the time she was appointed, she wasn't even registered in California. She was living in Maryland because she's been running EMILY's List and there were some concerns about some relationships she had, some work she had done for Airbnb and Uber. And all that stuff matters if you're going to enter a competitive primary with three very strong progressives, especially Barbara Lee, an amazing progressive, and Katie Porter, also a very strong progressive. And Adam Schiff is progressive, obviously, too. But every little bit of her background is going to be scoured if she decides to get into this race, and that'll be fair game, obviously.

Beard: Yeah, I will say, I think the bit about her living in Maryland is just so stupid. Like so many people who work in DC, they came up through a state's politics. They came to work in DC, which is the capital where the federal legislation that affects the whole country gets passed. That doesn't mean they're no longer from those states. Obviously, I moved to DC. I've lived in DC a long time. I really consider myself a DC resident. I'm registered to vote here, of course. Don't have any federal representation, but that's another story.

But lots of people, they come, they come work for a Congressman, they come work for a political organization that's fighting nationwide. That doesn't mean they're no longer connected to, and really ultimately residents of, those home states. She lived in California for a long time, so this whole objection I think is silly. We've seen tons of senators, incumbent senators, spend 300 plus days a year in their DC or Maryland or Virginia residences, so the idea that this is an objection for Butler is ridiculous.

Sudbay: Oh, I agree with you completely on that. And for example, let's just say Virginia resident Josh Hawley is a good example, which is why you're not going to see too much complaining about this from Republicans, because they really have their own set of members who really spend a lot of much more time in DC than they do back home.

Beard: Yeah, absolutely. So that's definitely going to be a race to watch as we get Butler's decision, and then obviously as the primary next year gets closer. Now, we have a bit of a theme for some of the other races we're going to talk about, which is the return of GOP disaster candidates from 2022. They ran, they were terrible, they lost, and now they're back. And we're going to start that with Arizona Senate, where Kari Lake, former television news anchor, former gubernatorial loser, has filed to run for Senate now. She's got an official announcement widely publicized and scheduled for next week.

She, of course, lost a very winnable race for a Republican last year. It was an open Arizona governor's race. 2022, despite not being as red as people expected, you would think any reasonable Republican would probably have been the favorite in that Arizona governor's race. She managed to lose it. She then spent months talking about how actually she won. People were joking about how can she be off doing these other things if she's really the governor of Arizona, as she insists? She got laughed out of court a bunch, and has now decided, why not run for another statewide office?

Sudbay: Yeah, it was one of these things she's been flirting with the idea of running for Senate for months. We kept hearing it. There was a lot of speculation that she was also trying very hard to put her name in contention for Vice President. She's been very, very close to Trump. When you look at MAGA candidates and who they are, she is one of the MAGAest of the MAGA candidates.

She's got a primary. One of the opponents she has is Mark Lamb, who's a sheriff in Arizona, who is another MAGA candidate. But I have to think the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, is not that happy that Kari Lake has gotten into the race. They really want this Arizona Senate back. Not too long ago, remember, there were two Republican senators from Arizona, then there were two Democrats. Now there's one Democrat and one independent.

But it does set up a race. We're waiting to see what happens whether Kyrsten Sinema, the now independent, decides to run again. There's rumors on both sides. She recently did a memo setting forth her path to winning. Ruben Gallego is going to be the Democratic nominee. So Arizona's going to be front and center this next year in this cycle. A really important race. Republicans want it back. And I just think a MAGA candidate running in 2024 in a state that has been trending blue, in a state where the president just appeared, President Biden just appeared. I thought it was really significant, David, that Biden appeared there last week to give a speech on democracy at the John McCain Library, which McCain, who used to be a very popular senator from that state, and now has just pure disdain from the likes of Lake and Lamb. It's really been a fascinating trajectory in that state for the Republican Party.

Beard: Yeah, I will give Lake this minor amount of credit for the Republican side in that she bullied Blake Masters out of the race. And if there's any candidate who is worse than Kari Lake in terms of a performance perspective, it's Blake Masters, possibly one of the worst candidates of all time. And so I guess the NRSC is like, at least we didn't get Blake Masters in this race, because he decided to defer to Lake. But I think it's wild that the NRSC, and I feel like the GOP in general, has just given up trying to get any sort of reasonable Republican in this race. They're probably just going to eat Kari Lake as the nominee.

You've got this strange situation, as you said, with Sinema and Gallego. Who knows what Sinema is going to do. But you would think under normal circumstances, the possibility of a Democrat and a Democrat-turned-independent both running would open the door wide open for the Republicans, if they could just nominate somebody reasonable. And instead, they're going with a crazy person basically who is not going to help them take advantage of that situation at all and is probably going to make it safer for Gallego to run against Sinema, and then not have to worry about splitting the vote like that.

Sudbay: Right. And I have to say, I think that Kari Lake entering this race is finally an acknowledgment she's not the governor.

Beard: Yes. She's going to be the governor and the senator. She's going to lose next November. She's going to pretend to be the senator too. She's going to collect elected positions like they're Pokemon.

Sudbay: Oh, man. What it guarantees too is this will be a very MAGA-focused race from the Republican side. It's interesting. People in Arizona who knew her when she was a TV personality, and I think of Richard Stevens, who is a drag queen who used to be friends with her, and you hear the stories of who she was when they knew her versus who she was now, and it is an amazing devolution I think is the best way to describe it.

Beard: Yeah. There is a degree of being in a cult with this MAGA stuff. You get in, and then you either have to do the difficult work of pulling yourself back out, or the alternative is to just get deeper in. We see so many people are like, "Let's just go deeper into this, circling the drain, get into those crazy conspiracy theories at the center of it" and it's sad really.

Sudbay: It is. It is sad. It's not good for our democracy but let's hope that Kari Lake helps us keep that Arizona Senate seat blue.

Beard: Yeah. Now up in Michigan, we've got less of a MAGA crazy candidate but we still have a MAGA candidate, and more of an incompetence candidate, that's returned. Former Detroit Police chief James Craig confirmed Tuesday that he was going to seek the Republican nomination for the open Michigan Senate seat. Of course, Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow is retiring.

Just a year ago in 2022, he was running for governor of Michigan, when he was kicked off the ballot due to fraudulent signatures. There were a number of candidates, it was this big scandal among a bunch of the Republican signature-gatherers. He wasn't the only candidate kicked off the ballot, but he was one of the key candidates who was kicked off the ballot.

He then tried to run as a write-in; that obviously went nowhere. He ended up endorsing a minor party candidate, because Tudor Dixon's abortion stance was too extreme for him, but now coming back, he is presenting himself as the Trump-y candidate, so he's all over the place with all of this.

He wrote this op-ed that was very pro-Trump, got Trump to share it, and he's trying to I guess get to the right of the NSRC-favored candidate, Mike Rogers, who just announced that he would be running a few weeks ago.

It'll be interesting to see if he can really get that Trump faction behind him and make this a race, because, again, under normal circumstances (and we say that so often) I think Rogers would wipe the floor with this guy, but if he manages to become the Trump-y candidate, who knows?

Sudbay: Right. Let's just remind everyone the Michigan Republican Party is a disaster right now, the state party is a disaster. They've got no money. It has just devolved. All they do is fight with each other. When I say fight with each other, I don't mean just argue, I mean, literally, fight. It has gotten tons of attention.

The NRSC, the national group, is going to try and come in and save the day, and they really want Mike Rogers. He is one of those old-school Republicans, but he's having a tough time now, David, because it's a new Republican Party, even since when he left Congress a couple of years ago. He was an FBI agent, he chaired the House intelligence committee, he is someone who ...

I don't think any Republicans are worth much, but he now is ... He was more of those business-y type, the old school business-y types, and there were a few in Michigan back in the day.

Now he's in this world where he's running against a guy, and let's just remind everyone, Craig, former police chief, is now out there defending Trump from all the criminal allegations against Trump, and intimating that there was something screwed up in the 2020 elections.

This thing has been so overly litigated but it still shows that — I'm going to put it in air quotes — "election fraud" from 2020 is still a very resonant issue in Republican circles and Craig is leaning into it in a big way, and Rogers is going to have to try and walk a tightrope, because he's going to want to watch ... He's going to want to be a "normie" Republican, such as they still exist, but that's not who the party base is anymore. Craig knows that, and that's why he's been sucking up to Trump, and that's why he's leaning in on election conspiracies.

Beard: Yeah. Rogers, back when he wasn't running for anything, said to the Washington Post, "Trump's time has passed." He criticized pretty harshly the January 6th rioters.

Of course, now that he has decided to run for Senate, now that he has to go before a Republican primary electorate, he's changed his tune a little bit. He put out a video last week proclaiming, "What we are seeing right now is a politically-motivated DOJ waging war against leading Republican presidential candidate on behalf of President Biden," which, of course, is not true. It's the DOJ doing its job, and President Biden isn't involved at all, but he knows that he has to appeal to the Trumpists, so he's getting on this bandwagon of poor, persecuted Donald Trump to try to make sure he doesn't get outflanked by Craig.

Sudbay: Right. What's so enraging, I mentioned Craig was a former police chief, Rogers was an FBI agent. He knows, he knows, and this is what really annoys me about some of these guys, he knows that the White House and most White House presidents have a hands-off approach to law enforcement.

Now Donald Trump didn't, Donald Trump figured that the DOJ was his private law firm, but Rogers knows Joe Biden has no say in who is prosecuted by the Department of Justice. He knows the FBI is independent. That's what I find makes it even more enraging when he takes these kind of positions.

Again, why is he doing it? Because this is where his party is.

Beard: Yup. Now to round out our little group of three defeated Republicans who are back again is one who is back again somehow, it's J.R. Majewski, the QAnon ally who ran for and lost Ohio's 9th District. That’s a seat that Republicans expected they could pick up, because they had gerrymandered it to be Republican-friendly but Marcy Kaptur, the longtime Democratic incumbent, managed to hold on after facing Majewski.

He announced for a second chance at this race earlier, then dropped out, citing his mother's health. Apparently, his mother has recovered, so he is back again. He is going to be running. Republicans in DC hate that. They're supporting state Representative Craig Riedel, who Majewski defeated two years ago in the Republican primary.

The list is almost too long to go through. There are stolen honor accusations; there's QAnon accusations; the guy is just all over the place.

Sudbay: Yeah. I have to think that at the NRCC, there were a lot of groans when they saw he was back in the race, because, again, popular in Republican circles. Ohio, as we know, is a state that has trended right, heavily gerrymandered state, as you mentioned, this district was basically made for a Republican, and Majewski lost it badly.

We know right now how close the House margins are; five seats will make the difference. Every single seat is going to matter. This, certainly, is a seat that in 2022, Republicans thought they had in their column, and they didn't and they badly want it back.

It's going to be interesting to see how much money they put in to defeat Majewski, because they want this seat badly.

Beard: Yeah. I think after we found out that there wouldn't be another round of re-districting where they could have finagled the lines even more to make it more Republican, so we know the lines are going to be what they were in 2022. I think they'll bail on the district if it's Majewski again, so they're going to have to go in hard and try to spend a lot of money to try to defeat him in the primary, because, otherwise, it's a seat they really should have in their column that they're not going to be able to get.

It'll be interesting to see how all-in they go to try to, at least, just make the seat competitive. Kaptur, of course, has been a great candidate, a very long-time Congresswoman from the Toledo area. She, I think, could win against a regular Republican too under the right circumstances but, certainly, against Majewski, she'll sail to reelection. We'll have to see.

Sudbay: Absolutely. There's one other House race that I’d just like to get on people's attention and it's Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District, currently occupied by Scott Perry, who is a hardcore right-winger. He's right now involved in litigation over whether or not his phone can be turned over to the special prosecutor, relating to the January 6th insurrection. He is in the thick of it.

The reason I bring him up, he's got a new opponent, a woman named Janelle Stelson, who has been on TV in the area in that community forever. It's central Pennsylvania, and the thing is most of the hardcore of the hardcore Freedom Caucus types are in really safe gerrymandered districts but Perry isn't.

Trump won this district like 51-47. In 2022, Governor Shapiro won it by a pretty wide margin, so it is a competitive district. Actually, on the Daily Kos Vulnerability Index, when y'all published it about a week ago, it listed the top 30. He's number 31.

I feel like this is a race, especially Pennsylvania, is going to be a really important state in 2024, and the Democrats in that state know that, and if they actually do a good job of organizing and if Janelle Stelson can raise some money, because Perry won last time like 54-46, he spent $3 million, his opponent spent $400,000, so I wonder if this is one of those races that with the right amount of funding and in the right circumstances, could become much more competitive. I would keep that on our radar.

Beard: Yeah. This is a district that has popped up periodically on the fringes of competitiveness. It got, of course, cleaned up in redistricting when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court implemented a fair map and ended the gerrymander, but sort of due to the nature of the area, it didn't change too much.

It's always been this sort of Harrisburg-based district with some outlying areas that have managed to keep it ... It was just a little bit Republican-leaning, but there have been other opportunities where folks thought that it might be competitive. It just started popping up on the radar a little bit again late in 2022.

With a real Democratic candidate and some real funds involved, I don't think Perry is a good fit for that district given how extreme he is, so it's definitely one worth keeping an eye on.

Sudbay: So much going on, David. Look, this was just the past week.

Beard: Yeah. Yeah. Before we move on to our interview with Nathaniel Rakich, we did just want to flag that early voting has started in Virginia; early voting has started in Louisiana for the first round of their election, which is Saturday, October 14th. If you live in Louisiana and you don't know that their weird election schedule is happening, that's when the first round of the election is, so if you do live in either of those states, make sure you take advantage and make sure you go out and vote.

Sudbay: Absolutely, because turnout is going to be everything in both of those states, and the others on the ballot this year too.

Beard: Joining us this week is friend of the pod, Nathaniel Rakich, from 538. Welcome back, Nathaniel.

Nathaniel Rakich: Hey, guys. It's good to be back.

Beard:

Well, obviously, this is quite a week. We've had a lot of events going on, but none as big as the events of the past few days where Speaker McCarthy is now former Speaker McCarthy. Obviously, we here at “The Downballot” are not usually into the weeds of how Congress operates on a day-to-day basis, but, of course, this is so big; it has an effect on everything, including, of course, 2024.

I guess just to start off, give us your takeaways from what's happened over the past couple days, what it means for this Congress is going to be operating going forward, and what it might mean for 2024.

Rakich: Yeah. I don't know where to start, right? It's just a crazy situation. Obviously, completely historically unprecedented; a Speaker has never lost his job in that way before in the middle of the term, been ousted by a member of his own party, effectively, eight of them joining with Democrats.

It's also hard to imagine it turning out any other way. Basically, after McCarthy got the Speakership in January, and he agreed to allow the single member to allow a motion to vacate, that was the ball game, right? He was always going to be walking this very thin line, and I was personally impressed that he made it through the debt ceiling deal without triggering the motion to vacate or, for that matter, triggering a debt default.

In this case, obviously, he had this choice on Saturday between letting the government shutdown and funding it with the help of Democrats, he chose to fund it with the help of Democrats, which maybe is a decision that now he regrets. But I just don't think there was any way once that happened that he was going to maintain support because as we probably saw in January, there are a lot of Republicans who were skeptical about him and Democrats very impressively stuck together. There was talk about some of them voting present which would've lowered the threshold that would've required McCarthy to lose, but they ended up all voting against him.

Sudbay: Yeah. One of the things I'm interested in, Nathaniel, is how this plays with the public at large. And I know we all tend to watch, I was watching nonstop, I'm not going to lie, every revelation over the past few days. And usually most people don't pay attention to what's happening in Congress. But I wonder just because of the historic nature of this, it's never happened before. It put Congress front and center, Republicans in Congress, front and center on news. Any news outlet you watched, every newspaper in the country whether it was delivered or online, was talking about the fact that for the first time, a speaker is deposed. Does that resonate in... I know it's early to tell but I know you've looked at how people view Congress over over time, so just your thoughts on that.

Rakich: Yeah, so I don't actually think that this fight and kind of the chaos in the house is going to matter all that much to voters. So I kind of took a look at this question again back in January after McCarthy also took a historically long — I think it was the most number of ballots needed to elect a speaker since 1860. And I took a look at that and whether that seemed to affect public opinion and basically the answer was no. So I'll cite a couple of examples. So Civiqs, as you guys know, maintains a running tracker of whether registered voters have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party. And basically all through that time in January, it stayed steady at 26% favorable. Ipsos, another good pollster, asked a question about whether Republicans or Democrats exhibited stronger leadership in Washington. They asked this in November 2022, and then they asked it after the speaker vote in January 2023. And there was basically no change.

Beforehand, it was 21% of respondents said Republicans were the stronger party, and afterward 19% did. And that of course is within the margin of error. So basically the theme here is that Americans have a pretty dim view of Republicans in Congress already. So I think the people who have a favorable view of them aren't going to change their mind. They're basically as low as they're going to go.

Beard: Obviously, it's hard to speculate given that we're in unprecedented times, something that has happened that has never happened before in the history of the country. But I think we can try to look ahead as best we can. Obviously, in the short term, Republicans have to somehow try to coalesce around a new speaker; who knows who that will end up being. Presumably it'll be somebody that the conservatives think will do a better job pushing their priorities. But what we do know is coming up in less than 45 days is another potential government shutdown. And it's hard for me to imagine any way that this new speaker won't at least shut the government down for a little while given that the conservatives want to push this really conservative issue stances that we know the Senate and the President won't accept. It seems like he or she's going to have no choice but to at least shut the government down for a while until all the conservatives will see the damage that that does.

So that seems like something that very well could hurt the Republicans at least in the short term if the government does shut down in say November or December.

Rakich: Yeah, that's a great point. I totally agree. If you're Steve Scalise or whoever the new speaker is, and you just saw what happened to Kevin McCarthy after he worked with Democrats to keep government open, why are you keeping the government open in November? It seems like we are headed for another shutdown. And yes, that seems like the kind of thing that would genuinely affect kind of Congress's approval ratings, Republicans’ approval ratings, and potentially also Biden's approval ratings since we've also seen polls that show plenty of Americans would've blamed Biden for the shutdown if it had happened. But that said, we all remember or maybe we don't, but I'm old enough to remember back in 2013 when Republicans shut down the government over Obamacare and they basically were like, "We refused to pass anything that funds Obamacare." They shut down the government for I think it was almost three weeks, and then ultimately ended up basically completely caving.

And that did significantly impact their popularity, but of course, they came back and had a very good midterm in 2014. So I think that while a shutdown I think would impact public opinion, I'm not sure it would stick around, that the impacts of that would stay around all the way through the 2024 election. That said, I do think Republicans probably dodged a bullet because obviously on this podcast you guys think a lot about off-year elections and stuff like that. And there was a lot of thought that if the government shut down in October with the legislative elections in Virginia coming up just a month later, that was really going to hurt Republicans there. Now it looks like the government shutdown might not happen until after those elections. So maybe Republicans dodged a bullet there.

Sudbay: Can I just ask, one aspect of this I'm wondering about, when we look at the House writ large it's 435 members, but I'm really more interested in about 18 of them. Those are the 18 Republicans who are in districts Biden won. They tend to be more urban/suburban-type districts. And I just wonder... And those are folks who I think who probably aren't getting their news from Fox News, maybe some of them are, but they may be more open to a variety of news sources.

And it does seem like one of the things we saw over the past couple of weeks, many of those members were going to the media complaining about their right-wing colleagues really kind of viciously in some places. I wonder just how if this... And they've been forced to take some tough votes too on positions, specifically abortion that probably won't play in those districts. Any sense of when we start looking down into some of those races, does all of this morass impact? I guess we'll have to wait and see, but just thoughts on that.

Rakich: Yeah, obviously I think they are trying to distance themselves from some of the more toxic elements of the Republican Party with general election voters. And I think some of them will be successful; some will be able to build their own kind of personal brands. But also at the end of the day, this isn't a midterm election, this is a presidential year. And one of the trends that we have seen over the last several cycles is presidential partisanship and congressional partisanship are just going more and more in lockstep. So I think it is going to be harder and harder for those Biden-district Republicans to survive, assuming of course that Biden carries their districts again, which of course Biden could do worse overall or that we could see some more coalition shifts. But I think ultimately at the end of the day, I would be paying a lot more attention to whether Trump or Biden, assuming Trump is the Republican nominee, carries their district. And I think that's going to be 75%, to put a random number on it, of the determinant of the outcome there.

Beard: Now, one last question on this whole morass as Joe called it before we move on to some other topics. Kevin McCarthy himself, obviously, one thing that he is known for, raising a ton of money, That's certainly something that we could see some effect around these Republican candidates not having as quite as big of a pool to draw from on the IE side. Though of course, I'm sure the next speaker will be able to raise some funds as well.

And then his seat in Congress obviously, it is a safe Republican seat, but it is possible that he might bail at some point before next year's elections. He was asked about this, he gave sort of a non-committal answer that would open up a seat even if it's pretty Republican-leaning and also narrow the margin if he does resign early.

Rakich: Yeah. No, definitely that's something I'm very curious about. Obviously, I follow up as we'll talk about special elections very closely. If he does resign, we'd have an interesting special election there. Obviously, it is a Republican seat, but it'd be interesting to see how a Democrat might perform there given the pattern we've seen in other special elections and also general antipathy probably to McCarthy. But no, I think it's really interesting because I am one of the people who assumed that Nancy Pelosi was basically going to resign on the first day of the new Congress once she lost the speaker's gavel. And obviously, she's sticking around. So I wonder if McCarthy will do the same. I think it, maybe, does depend on how much he decides he's just completely over it and how much of a team player he wants to be. I could see maybe the most likely scenario is that he retires in 2024 but doesn't resign.

And that way assuming somebody like Steve Scalise, who obviously was McCarthy's deputy, that way Scalise doesn't have a super... It'll be a narrow margin to deal with, but obviously, every Republican who resigns makes it a little bit harder to maneuver for the new speaker. So maybe he'll be a team player and stick around for that. Yeah, keep on raising money for the Republicans who he decided he wants to raise money for, not Nancy Mace — I did find it funny that Inside Elections’ Jacob Rubashkin tweeted out after Nancy Mace voted to oust McCarthy that McCarthy had raised five million dollars for Nancy Mace, which is kind of mind-boggling if you think about it. But anyway, I feel like if I had to put a guess on it I would say he sticks around through 2024 but retires in that election and a new Republican is elected in that district.

Beard: So speaking of special elections, obviously we here at Daily Kos and you are both big fans of special elections. We love to track them; we love to talk about them. So take us through what we've been seeing in 2023 and the special election tracker that you have and what it might point to obviously at this early stage.

Rakich: Yeah. No, the trends have been really quite staggering. I apologize for over-explaining perhaps — but for people who don't follow special elections maybe as closely as we do, special elections obviously are these elections that come up when there's a vacancy in Congress or more often in state legislatures. And it isn't necessarily who wins those elections, but the margins in those elections relative to kind of a partisan baseline, whether that's based on the presidential results in those districts, whether that's based on how previous candidates for legislature or Congress have done in those districts. But comparing the special election margin to that baseline does tend to be predictive of the future election results in the district specifically basically in the general election. So in this case, in November 2024 if Democrats are consistently doing better in special elections, that bodes well for them in 2024. Same with if Republicans are. And the pattern so far has been the Democrats are doing really, really well.

So according to my method of coming up with a partisan baseline, which is basically a blend of 2020 presidential partisanship and 2016 presidential partisanship, Democrats have been outperforming that partisan baseline by an average of 11 percentage points in special elections so far this year. And this is a pattern that is not just a small sample size, this is based mostly on state legislative special elections. But it is over 40 of them, which is really quite consistent at this point and really difficult to ignore. And that overperformance is on par with what we saw in 2018, and it's also similar to what we saw in special elections after the Dobbs decision in 2022. So based on that, it seems like Democrats have a lot of enthusiasm. There's a lot of reason for optimism for 2024. That said, obviously, this is very much at odds with what preliminary general election polls are saying, which are, obviously, another potential indicator.

So it's kind of a confusing situation right now. I'd say there's a reason for cautious optimism for Democrats, but I also don't think Joe Biden is going to win the popular vote by 11 percentage points. So I don't know; I think we'll have to wait and see. But yeah, there've been some really interesting numbers and some big flips for Democrats like in New Hampshire a couple of weeks ago.

Sudbay: Yeah, these races really are interesting and that really goes to 538 paying attention to this last year. And, certainly, while there was an overall consensus by many that it was going to be a red wave, the special election indicators pointed otherwise that, I guess, like you said, we would like to see. But one thing I'm interested in then, we know that there are three governor's races coming up and the legislative races in Virginia. What are you going to be looking for there in terms of what’s predictive for 2024? I know some of those states are like Mississippi's a pretty red state. But I'm just interested in how that will factor in as you're thinking ahead for 2024 too.

Rakich: Yeah, definitely. So I would basically throw out the governor's races in terms of predictability, because governor's races as folks know, can be very idiosyncratic. Governorships are much more independent of base partisanship than the Senate, House, or even state legislatures are. They're becoming more in line; obviously, the number of Republican governors in blue states and Democratic governors in red states that has declined over the last few years. But you still see people like Andy Beshear in Kentucky. You obviously have John Bel Edwards in Louisiana, although it looks like Louisiana is probably going to flip Republican. But if Beshear wins in Kentucky, I think that probably says more about Beshear's personal brand and his popularity than it does about Democratic strength — although perhaps Democratic strength and issues like abortion would probably also have contributed because I know that Daniel Cameron has been hit hard on the issue of abortion.

Virginia is a really interesting case. I think Virginia is, I would say, somewhat predictive, but I would offer two caveats versus the special elections. One is that special elections, by definition, don't have incumbents. So you really are going off a neutral baseline. And in Virginia, you have a lot of incumbents. And so I think you will want to separate out maybe how Democrats do or Republicans, for that matter, in seats with Republican incumbents versus Democratic incumbents versus open seats. That's one.

And then second is Virginia is an unusual state, or it's unique in that it's a state, obviously, that used to be red, now is pretty reliably blue, Glenn Youngkin notwithstanding, but I think voters are a lot more comfortable voting Republican down-ballot still than they are at the top of the ticket. And so if you see a district that, say, Joe Biden carried by five or even 10 points, you wouldn't necessarily say that that is a safe Democratic district in the legislative elections.

And that's why the power of special elections altogether is very powerful, because you have special elections from Virginia, and New York, and Tennessee, and New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. And so you have states like Virginia, maybe where Republicans might be strong down-ballot, balanced out with other states where Democrats might be stronger down-ballot. So I would pay closer attention to the special elections in terms of predictability.

Beard: That leads me into another topic, the topic of polling. Obviously, 538 does a great job tracking a plethora of polls, particularly during election season, of course, but throughout the year. One of the things that we saw in 2022 was a lot of polling, some of which was good, some of which was not so good, particularly Republican-aligned polling groups or organizations. They put out a lot of polls in 2022. There weren't nearly as many progressive-aligned polls. And what you saw was that, in some cases, that certainly presented a skewed picture of what might've been going on when there were other indicators, like special elections, like other things, that the races were closer or Democrats were not doing as bad as people expected. How do you think that affected things in 2022? How do you think that'll affect things in 2024? What's the best way to think about these polls from partisan-aligned groups that have been historic now, GOP a lot, but even progressive groups, as well?

Rakich: Yeah, definitely. On the 538 Politics Podcast, we have a segment called Good Use of Polling or Bad Use of Polling where we go through a poll and we say whether it's being used correctly or appropriately or whether people are misusing it. And I definitely think that, in 2022, we saw a general bad use of polling. The polling in 2022 was actually quite accurate. I did an article a few months ago looking at the accuracy, basically, on average, what was the margin of all of these polls in 2022 and compare that to the average margin of those elections. And it found that the 2022 polls were actually the most accurate of any election cycle going back to 1998.

So the polls themselves were pretty good. There was a slight overestimation of Republicans, but only by a few percentage points. It was mostly people in the media and such looking at the polls that said Republicans were going to do well, which confirmed their biases because it was a democratic midterm year, et cetera, and running with those polls and not paying as much attention to the polls that were better for Democrats. So I think it was more of a question similar to what we saw in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was leading in the polls over Donald Trump, but not by that much, but people just assumed that "Oh, yeah, the country would never elect Donald Trump, and so Hillary Clinton's four-point lead in the polls is totally safe," which obviously ended up not being true.

So in terms of implications going forward, obviously, here at 538, we are always pro-polls. They are the single best tool that we have for predicting elections, particularly when we are on the eve of elections. Here, we're a year out and it's a little fuzzier because early polls can be misleading, but if we were a year from now and it were October of 2024, I would absolutely be putting my faith in the polls, but you have to interpret them consistently. You have to put them into an average. Don't pay attention to outlier polls, like the poll we saw the other day with Trump leading Biden by 10 points a year before the election. You have to put these things into an average and not allow personal biases or preconceptions to creep into your interpretation.

Sudbay: Yeah. And one of the things I'm wondering about is how you factor in the polls that don't necessarily maybe adhere to industry standards for transparency or data collection because those are the polls that often seem to get a lot of attention. What do you and your colleagues do and how do you, I don't even know what the right word is, unscramble that?

Rakich: Absolutely. There are lots of ways that you can do it. So at 538, we have pollster ratings. So we look at which pollsters have had better records of accuracy and which ones are more transparent and we give those polls bigger weight in our averages and in our models. For partisan polls in particular, we will basically adjust those. So if you are a Republican-aligned pollster or a Democratic-aligned pollster, we'll assume that your results are a few points too good for the respective side. That goes a long way, quite frankly, to getting rid of some of these biases.

Beard: So before we let you go, I wanted to touch on the big news out of California, which of course would've been the big news of the week had not everything else happened. We talked about it a little bit at the top of the show, but we wanted to get your take on it, as well. Laphonza Butler, of course, is the new senator from California appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom. She hasn't said whether or not she might run for a full term. There's a lot of history of appointed incumbents running for full term. I think it's a mixed bag, but what's your take on her chances if she does run and the state of that race if she doesn't?

Rakich: Yeah, exactly. It is a mixed bag, and I think this is something that a lot of people forget and was lost in a lot of the hand-wringing over Gavin Newsom potentially appointing Barbara Lee and putting a finger on the scale. The reality is, if you go back and look at appointed senators and their success rate in future elections when they run for a full term, it is not that great. And in fact, it is not that much better than just a candidate running from scratch as a non-incumbent. So I can think about Luther Strange, who lost in the Republican primary to Roy Moore in 2017 in Alabama; there was Martha McSally who lost in Arizona a couple of years ago.

There are just lots of examples. It does not carry the same kind of advantage that you get as an incumbent when you are elected as an incumbent, and that's because running and then winning an election gives you advantages. It gives you a fundraising network, which, maybe, Laphonza Butler has because of her history in California state politics and EMILY's List, but it also makes you a stronger campaigner. Like anything, when you start doing something the first time, you're maybe not that good at it, but you learn, you get better with practice, and also, just voters know your name on the ballot, having voted for you. They've got that muscle memory of checking the box for you, which they don't have if they've never seen your name on the ballot before.

So I'm really curious to see if Butler runs. I think, obviously, she'd be in the mix, but I certainly wouldn't start off with her as the favorite. She'd start from behind, certainly, on fundraising. The fundraising in that race has been totally bananas. Adam Schiff has raised, I don't even remember, but some ungodly sum of money. And now that there's going to be a special election in addition to the regular election, they can now raise twice as much money because the federal limits apply to both the special election and the regularly scheduled election.

I think, regardless of whether Butler runs, I think that Schiff looks like the favorite to me. In early polls, which granted, it is still early, it looks like Schiff and Katie Porter are the two who are going to advance to the general election, and I just don't see Butler as someone who would automatically start off as a strong enough candidate to significantly change the dynamic of that race.

Beard: Yeah. And I think Schiff had something like $400,000 that he got to add to his campaign account in interest just from the millions and millions of dollars that he has sitting in accounts waiting to be spent next year.

Rakich: Wow.

Beard: So it is really a wild situation out there in terms of funding. It is one of those situations where you think, "Hey, there's a lot of," in this case, "Democratic candidates across the country who could use some of that money," but of course, you as the candidate have a responsibility to win your own race. They're not running to be chair of the DSCC or the DCCC; they're trying to become a senator. So you can't very well say, "Hey, give some of that money away," but it’s maybe not an ideal disbursement of funds if you're a Democrat trying to get Democrats elected.

Sudbay: Well, that $20 million Adam Schiff was sitting on last year might've helped keep him as Chair of the Intelligence Committee, but that's another story for another time.

Beard: Nathaniel, before we let you go, where can people follow you out in the great wide internet?

Rakich: Yeah. Well, we at 538 are still publishing at our new website, at abcnews.com/538, the numbers, not the letters, and people can follow me personally on X, as it's now called, but also bluesky, @baseballot.

Beard: Great. A lot of transitions for your places to follow, but make sure you find him and follow him. He's a great person to read. So thanks for joining us.

Rakich: Thank you guys so much.

Beard: That's all from us this week. Thanks to Nathaniel Rakich for joining us and thanks to Joe Sudday for our guest hosting. “The Downballot” comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to “The Downballot” on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Trever Jones, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/5/2197435/-TheDownballot-Will-McCarthy-s-fall-affect-battle-for-the-House-538-s-Nathaniel-Rakich-transcript?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_recent_news&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/