Panic! At the G.O.P. Disco

Leigh Ann Caldwell (0:00)

There is just this palpable shift among Democrats who are always worried, always unwilling to measure the curtains or to gloat or to, you know, they're just nail biters until the very end. And it's really interesting how confident they are right now.

Peter Hamby (0:25)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, a Hux podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Friday, September 25th. Today, I'm joined by Leigh Ann Caldwell with the look at rising Republican panic about the midterms as Democrats start to smoke some hopium with a spate of polls suggesting that this might be a wave election as voters turn on Donald Trump. Leigh Ann also tells me about a once credible Democratic outside group End Citizens United that some Democrats are now calling a scam pack.

We'll discuss all of that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Friday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my colleague, Leigh Ann Caldwell, to discuss a big week in campaign politics. We're starting to see lots of polls showing the bottom might be falling out for Republicans heading into the midterms. We're starting to see Republican candidates for House and Senate start to panic, call on Donald Trump to do something about gas prices, diesel prices, and the war in Iran. Leigh Ann's going to talk to me about what Republicans are really saying behind closed doors. We're also going to discuss some of her great reporting this week on a Democratic super PAC and Citizens United, and whether it's just a scam PAC. If you don't know what scam PACs are, you're about to find out it's been a problem for both parties for many years now. But first, Leigh Ann, let's talk about the midterms. It really felt like the panic button went off somewhere inside the Republican Party this week in particular. Democrats are injecting a lot of hopium. Some polls are showing Democrats with leads in Senate races, including in Iowa this week and Texas. You're also starting to hear murmurs about Republican operatives on background, panicking, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So beyond what we're seeing online, beyond what we're seeing in the polls and the headlines, what do Republicans really think? Why have things all of a sudden, it feels like, it's always been bad, the cycle for Republicans, of course, but why did it feel like we reached new levels of alarm this week with Republicans?

Leigh Ann Caldwell (2:47)

So I actually heard it more among Democrats. I felt the vibe shift among Democrats in the past one to two weeks, really the past two weeks, especially end of last week, something shifted. You know, I reported last week that Democrats had no internal polling in their house races that showed any Democratic incumbent losing or behind. And that's even in the redistricted districts, the gerrymandered districts and Trump plus 18 district. So I started to feel this shift actually among Democrats who were increasingly confident. On Wednesday, I ran into a Senate Democrat aide and I said, okay, the House feels like it's going to flip. What about the Senate? And they said, it is really hard to find excuses of why we don't win.

So there is just this palpable shift among Democrats who are always worried, always unwilling to measure the curtains or to gloat or to, they're just nail biters until the very end. And it's really interesting how confident they are right now. They always still give me the caveat of like, look, it's still mid September.

If it's like this in mid October, we're good, so a lot can happen. But it doesn't look like the political environment is going to change. And so this could, in fact, even though everyone for months and months has said there's no such thing as wave elections anymore, it could in fact be one of them.

Peter Hamby (4:31)

Yeah, I saw John Anzalone, who's a Democratic pollster working for a variety of statewide Dems this cycle. He used to work for Biden, tweet something about how this looks like 1994 all over again. However, I think a lot of smart Democrats too are saying, you know, we could be ahead by five points in the Texas Senate race and even the Texas Governor's race, but you have to run through the tape. I actually pulled up New York Times, Sienna polls from October of 2020 That was the last Senate cycle that included a lot of these states. It was a presidential cycle, of course. So big caveat here. You know, I think both of us remember elections where Democrats were a little cocky.