Donald Trump had a bad night during the midterm elections.
In fact, if you look at the candidates he endorsed, promoted,
those candidates did not fare so well if you compare them to the traditional
Republicans who Trump has turned on, those Republicans did really well.
So for instance, why don't we take a quick look at the great state of Georgia?
Where yes, Brian Kemp did in fact win against Stacey Abrams,
so that's sad news, but take a look at his lead, okay, so
he's at 53.4% and Stacey Abrams is at 45.8%.
This is relevant because he did really, really well despite the fact that Trump
attacked him pretty viciously because he wouldn't do what Trump wanted him to do
in helping him overturn the election to Trump's favor.
Now let's take a quick look at the Senate race between Walker and Warnock and
if you look at this, it's too close to call, this is going to a runoff election.
So there is no winner because no one passed 50%.
But nonetheless, Herschel Walker who was promoted pretty vigorously
by Donald Trump is at 48.52%, Raphael Warnock is at 49.42%.
So Cenk do you wanna jump in on this?
>> God, damn right I do.
All right guys, so we start with this cuz is the most important election, not
just in terms of determining the Senate with a Walker, Warnock very likely will.
Because it looks like Democrats are gonna lose Nevada and
then if they win in Arizona, which they expect to do given where it is here we go
again Georgia runoff would decide who holds the senate.
But more important than that,
look at the gigantic difference between a sane Republican and
an insane Republican and so I'm not a fan of Brian Kemp to say the least.
I think almost all the Republicans have radical ideas, a lot of people
throw around including us the word fascist, so what do we mean by that?
Would I call Brian Kemp a fascist?No.
So, he's maybe a reactionary Republican and he does the voter purges etc.
But he doesn't deny that Joe Biden won the 2020 election,
he doesn't make up evidence after an election.
And so he's attached to reality as opposed to being detached from reality.
Now Walker on the other hand is on team Trump, fully detached from reality.
And in the same state on the same night, that made an 8.5 point difference.
Wow, 200,000 people in Georgia showed up and
voted for Kemp and said I am not voting for
Walker, it's almost exactly 200,000 people.
So Trump indisputably cost them 200,000 votes in Georgia,
cost them a gigantic 8.5 points, that's what I am now calling the Trump quotient.
So that makes picking Trump in a Republican primary, political suicide.
You're costing your own team 8.5 points before anything even starts.
So Republicans have at it hoss if you wanna do that, you're playing with fire.
And so, me I don't wanna play with fire when it comes to democracy,
I'd just rather have Trump not run or losing the Republican primary, but
Republicans, it is a guaranteed that you're gonna lose.
Even if it's, okay and Georgia by the way is a perfectly representative purple state
for the whole country, it doesn't get any more clear than this.
You're gonna cost yourselves 8.5 points indisputably, have at it if you want.
>> I mean, Pennsylvania is another good example, right?
And I think that what happened with Mehmet Oz in the Senate race against Fetterman in
Pennsylvania is kind of indicative of what we're talking about here.
So, in the Republican primary,
even though Trump was just asked over and over again by other members
of the Republican establishment to not endorse Oz, he did it anyway.
And Oz really attached himself to Trump during the Republican primary in
that race.
But once he got to the general election, Oz had to kind of backpedal really and
try to find ways to disconnect himself from Trump and
he clearly didn't do a good enough job because Fetterman won.
And the other thing I'll just mention, we're gonna have a longer
conversation about that particular race later in the show.
I noticed John also tweeted this and I was thinking it myself,
turns out making fun of disabled people who suffered from a stroke not so
popular, not a great campaign strategy.
Especially in a country where lots of people suffer from strokes and
go through the recovery process.
I mean, I can't believe he even thought that was a good idea, but
I'm glad he did it.
>> But Republicans can't help themselves,
they're always gonna go the most vicious attack.
But to the Republicans who said, he can't even speak,
look at him of course, no way, right?
Well, he just beat your guy and why did he beat him?
Let's be honest, it's because Trump picked a loser,
Trump always picks losers including himself and so, look the reason I'm elated
today is because the main message of last night's elections was sanity.
The Democrats did not do that well against sane Republicans, but
they did really well against insane Republicans.
And so, we might actually get back to a country that is not on the edge
of fascism and that would be amazing.
>> And that is where I find a little bit of optimism, okay, so
that's where the optimism lies.
Now, let's move on to other surprising takes from last night.
So, let's get to this congressional race in California's 47th district, this is
a newly drawn district and unfortunately it is not working to Katie Porter's favor.
Katie Porter is one of my favorite members of Congress,
she has the right economic policy ideas.
The mainstream Democratic Party was a little critical of her because she broke
with the party in advocating for the SALT deductions,
which I actually agree with her on that.
Even though those deductions of course benefits some wealthy people,
there are all sorts of working people who are not wealthy in states like California,
who really relied on that deduction.
And doing away with it was obviously retaliatory tactic by Donald Trump
when he passed his tax cuts for the rich.
Nonetheless, because this is a newly redrawn district, it is a tight race,
the results are not complete yet, they're still counting ballots because
California of course allows mail-in voting.
But Katie Porter as it stands right now with 47% of the vote in,
is at 50.28% and her Republican challenger
Scott Baugh is at 49.72%, it is close,
razor thin and we don't even have all the votes in yet.
So, I'm actually scared about this race.
>> So there's complicating factors in New York and
California where the Republicans probably did best, those two states.
Now it's interesting cuz there was among the two most democratic states, but
that means that Democrats have more to lose, right?
So, when the Republicans pick up any kind of momentum,
they're probably gonna pick it up in places like California and New York.
Now the Sean Patrick Maloney race we're gonna get to in New York,
that's also potentially indicative.
Every race has its own dynamics including the redistricting that Anna mentioned in
Porter's race.
But there is one other dynamic which is crime and around LA and
around New York city is where you see the biggest impact.
Hochul should have won in a landslide, she wins by about five or so in New York,
but not really comfortably enough and in New York governor's race,
got called all the way at one o'clock in the morning.
That was way, way, way closer than expected and
then you see the Maloney race and you see Katie Porter out here.
So, some of the things that we were concerned about economy and crime,
were still issues they were just covered up by Donald Trump's circus time, right?
So, since he pitched the giant circus tent in the middle of the election and clowns
were running around, we got distracted especially by his clown candidates.
But when there wasn't a clown candidate in, we have really tight races like this.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
So let's get to Sean Patrick Maloney cuz I think this is an interesting race for
the reasons that you mentioned Cenk, but
also it's an interesting race because of who he was as a politician.
So Sean Patrick Maloney is a Democrat,
he also happened to be the chair of the D-Triple-C.
He was voted out in a humiliating loss,
the GOP state lawmaker by the name of Mike Lawler won that race.
So how did Lawler do it?
Well, he did attack Maloney on crime and inflation.
Lawler's key platforms of combating crime and tackling inflation mirror
those of the party, but resonated especially well in the new 17th District.
Which includes parts of Westchester County,
along with more exurban counties like Putnam and Rockland.
It encompasses several diverse communities, including a large and
politically active Orthodox Jewish voting block.
The area also has a large proportion of households with first responders,
law enforcement or military members.
And so, I'm sure the anti-crime message resonated deeply with
the individuals living in that district for obvious reasons.
But Cenk what do you think about this?
I mean, obviously it's not good to have a Republican win,
an additional Republican member of Congress,
at the same time Maloney as chair of the D-Triple-C made some bad decisions.
>> 100%, so chair of the D-Triple-C's job is to make sure that as many Democrats as
possible to win in the House.
And so, instead of doing that, when there was redistricting in New York,
he did not stay in his own district.
He decided to go into Mondaire Jones's district for two different reasons.
One is he thought that it would be safer, oops.
Number two, he thought if I push Mondaire out and
he wouldn't dare run against me cuz I'm gonna have all the money in the world.
He's probably gonna go to Jamaal Bowman's district that way we are guaranteed to
eliminate a progressive.
Remember Democratic leadership you'll never hear the same cable news, but
with maneuvers like what Sean Patrick Maloney did, it's very clear and
they make it clear every time.
And they also make it clear in they're spending, we show that to you
in every race, they hate progressives, they despise progressives.
So Maloney thought, I'll be cute, you know what, I'll laugh around, okay?
And I'll push Mondaire and
then Mondaire Jones didn't wind up going to a different district, not Jamal's and
he should get credit for that by the way, that he didn't go into Bowman's district.
But he did wind up losing, so he loses and then Maloney was, all right,
I got all the cops and the firefighters and I gotta say for district,
I'm a conservative Democrat.
So, man those cops and firefighters are gonna love me, are they, are they?
By the way Max Rose in Staten Island, another very conservative Democrat running
around telling everybody how great Republicans are, lost by 30 or 40 points.
Because it turns out his voters believe them, they're like, yeah you're right,
the Republicans are better for them instead of you, right?
So Maloney after effing around he found out, so if you said to me,
do you want him to win the race or not?
Yes, I would have said of course I want him to win the race cuz I don't want
the clown show to take over the House.
But if you said to me, hey x number of Democrats are gonna lose,
which Democrat would you like to be in that batch?
I probably would add Sean Patrick Maloney near the top of that list, so,
bye Felicia.
So, one of the race I wanted to bring up is the Senate race in Nevada
against Adam Laxalt who's the Republican in the race and Catherine Cortez Masto.
It looks as though the Republican is gonna win,
we have 77% of the vote in, it has not been called yet,
but he does have a lead, he's at 49.9% to Masto's 47.2%.
>> Yeah, I think it's gonna be tough unless they get votes
from predominantly Democratic counties in Nevada going forward.
It's always possible, but it looks the Republicans gonna win that seat.
Now, last night when she had the lead, I had filled out my poll and
that was one of the only ones that I had gotten wrong,
because we thought Cortez Masto is gonna win.
And I was, I'm kinda surprised by that cuz she's one of those lettuce candidates,
just a head that just sits there and does nothing, right?
And so that's a classic Democratic candidate.
I exist, I'm a Democrat, Republicans they're bad guys.
>> She's very enthusiastic and happy though.
>> Yeah, she did nothing during the campaign, she's done nothing as a senator,
nothing, nothing, nothing in other words a very classic Democrat, right?
And I was and those guys almost always lose.
So, running against a non insane Republican,
I was that seats not at all safe, right?
And so it turns out, yep and now that's probably a loss of one seat,
we pick up a seat in Pennsylvania that Fetterman one.
So we're back to even and Warnock and
Herschel Walker will decide who has the majority in the Senate very likely,
especially if Mark Kelly finishes off Blake Masters in Arizona.
But the point here is guys, look again, it was Trump's fault.
Because if they had not run clown candidates,
the Democrats would have lost a lot more seats,
when you have a standard Democrat versus a standard Republican, the Republicans won.
If we're being honest,
that's why the election results are not as good as they appear.
But the reason we're elated is because it makes it even starker that it's definitely
Trump's fault.
And so that might mean that fascism is closer to being expelled
from American politics.
>> I like to think of the midterms this time around as having
the Sarah Palin effect.
Because Sarah Palin was so incompetent that when she was set to debate Joe Biden,
everyone thought she was gonna bomb that she was gonna do so poorly.
Just like right before the midterms, everyone thought there was gonna be a red
wave and when it didn't end up being as bad as we expected, it's like, yeah,
we're still losing the House likely, but we didn't lose as much, yeah.
>> And we might even still lose the Senate but yeah [LAUGH].
>> And by the way, losing the Senate would be disastrous, especially when you
consider what the Senate mainly does, which is confirm federal judges.
So having Republicans in charge of the Senate would be again a disaster.