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Oct. 19, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:01:06
It’s Election Season Crunch Time | Ep. 1592
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New polling shows Republicans jumping into the lead on the congressional generic ballot, and we examine all the closest Senate races state by state.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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Slash Ben will get to all the news in just one moment.
First, the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index, which catalogs the cost of goods, services, food, and rent, rose 0.4% over the month of August, double what many economists had anticipated.
Perhaps worse, core inflation that excludes food and gas prices saw the highest increase last month it's seen since August of 1982.
So, what exactly is the current administration doing to stop the inflation?
Well, they passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which was only like, you know, Trillion dollars for nothing?
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The crosstabs are significantly worse for the Democrats.
month of coverage. That is at PeerTalk.com, promo code Shapiro to get started. Well, there's a brand new New York Times poll out and what it shows is that Republicans have now jumped into a four point lead. The cross tabs are significantly worse for the Democrats. This is going to have a significant effect on the US.
Senate map in particular.
Right now, real clear politics suggests that Republicans are probably going to net a couple of seats, which would put them in the majority.
Essentially, the races right now that are hot in the Senate boil down to Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, maybe New Hampshire, maybe Colorado.
But those are the big ones.
And we're going to go through these state by state.
But to understand what exactly is happening here, you have to understand that the chief issue is absolutely the economy.
And this is what this New York Times Siena poll shows.
What it shows is that 64% of likely voters believe the country is moving in the wrong direction, which means doom for the party in power, especially if it's a unified party in power controlling the House, the Senate, and the presidency.
This poll shows that just 39% somewhat or strongly approve of Joe Biden.
As opposed to 58% who say they somewhat disapprove or strongly disapprove of Joe Biden.
Those are terrible numbers for the President of the United States.
In fact, they are lower numbers than President Trump currently has.
Trump currently has a 43% approval rating, 53% unfavorable rating.
It is worth noting here, when it comes to the exact issues that are supposedly on the radar of voters, likely voters, 26% say the economy is their number one issue.
18% say inflation or the cost of living is their number one issue.
No other issue here, with the exception of just the state of democracy, ranks above 8%.
So that means 44% of voters say that their top issues are issues that cut in favor of Republicans. 44%.
Again, abortion is a 5% issue.
Immigration is a 5% issue.
Crime is a 3% issue in terms of what is your top issue.
The state of democracy is an 8% issue.
As we'll see, however, the state of democracy is too vague because when you actually look at the partisan breakdown in terms of what people think they're talking about when they say the state of democracy, very wide discrepancy between what Republicans believe they're talking about and what Democrats believe they're talking about.
And again, these numbers are fairly consistent in terms of the economy across the party ID.
So 35% of Republicans say the economy is their top issue.
26% of Independents say it's their top issue.
17% of Democrats say it is their top issue.
Inflation or the cost of living?
23% of Republicans say top issue.
Independents 14%.
Democrats 17%.
8% of Democrats say abortion.
7% of Independents say abortion.
12% of Republicans say immigration.
So it's really kind of... For Republicans, their second issue is immigration.
For Democrats, their second issue is abortion.
And then when you go down to the state of democracy, what you see is that 11% of Democrats say that this is their main issue, meaning it's slightly above abortion actually, so abortion comes in number three.
9% of Democrats and 9% of Independents and 4% of Republicans.
Now, what's really fascinating about this poll is what it shows is actually fairly broad spectrum agreement on a fair number of issues that demonstrate the difference between the online reality and the real world.
And this is important because candidates who tend to cater to the online reality are going to suffer in the polls.
And we're going to see this when we go state by state.
The candidates who tend to be very online are the ones who are doing worse.
The ones who tend to be out there hobnobbing with the actual voters and trying to cater to actual human beings, those are the ones who are doing better.
The reason I say this is because if you look at this poll, they ask some interesting questions.
They said, thinking about the people you meet, do you think other people's political views tell you a lot about whether someone is a good person, a little about whether someone is a good person, or don't tell you anything about whether someone is a good person?
And what they found is only 14% of people said that someone's political views told you a lot about whether someone's a good person, 35% said it told you a little, and 39% said it didn't tell you anything at all.
And those numbers are really, really consistent between Republicans and Democrats, actually.
19% of Democrats say that politics tells you a lot about whether somebody is a good person.
Only 19%, less than 1 in 5 Democrats.
15% of Republicans, 8% of Independents think it tells you a lot about a person, what their politics are, whether they are a good person or not.
Only 20% of likely voters say they've had disagreements recently with family or friends over political issues that hurt the relationship.
And again, these numbers are fairly consistent.
That's 23% of Democrats, 16% of Republicans, 20% of Independents.
The vast majority of Americans are happy to have conversations with their family and friends, even if they differ on politics.
There's also broad-spectrum agreement that the government mainly works to benefit powerful elites.
Now, one of the things that's shocking here, actually, is actually a shocking question.
When you look at the party breakdown, 75% of Republicans believe the government is there to benefit powerful elites.
69% of independents say the same thing.
Only 58% of Democrats agree.
So Democrats are not aligned with independents here.
And when it comes to whether the president should follow existing rules, there's actually a fairly consistent level of agreement between Republicans and Democrats that the president shouldn't just violate the law willy-nilly.
So if you have a very online president who's just willing to, say, relieve student loan debt without any further discussion about the legality of that, that actually is not something that's going to be wildly popular with any element of the political spectrum.
As far as the question that the media have really pumped up about whether America's political system is on the verge of bankruptcy, whether wide-scale violence is going to break out, apparently about 46% of likely voters say that the American political system can still address the nation's problems.
48% say it's too divided politically to solve its problems.
Now, the reality is that most of the nation's problems are not solvable politically.
Most of them are going to have to happen socially, in your community, in your family.
But, again, very consistent numbers here.
46% of Democrats, 46% of Republicans, 47% of Independents believe that the government can still address the nation's problems.
As opposed to 45% of Democrats, 49% of Republicans, 51% of Independents who believe that we are now too divided politically to solve America's problems.
As far as whether American democracy is currently under threat, again, very consistent numbers.
Most Americans believe that American democracy is currently under threat.
They just believe that based on varying sources of the threat.
Democrats here say, presumably, Donald Trump is the biggest threat.
Republicans say that the biggest threat is Democrats.
So, not a giant shock right there.
But what this really shows is that when you get beyond President Trump, there actually is fairly broad scale agreement that the government is not supposed to overstep its boundaries, that the government is not capable of solving all of our problems, That the major threats to democracy are basically about our inability to get along?
By the way, 54% of independents believe that the media is a major threat to our democracy.
85% of Republicans agree.
Only 34% of Democrats think the same.
I will say that even among Democrats, 67% say that the mainstream media is either a major or a minor threat to democracy, which is kind of astonishing.
So, what does all of this mean?
Well, what it really means when it comes down to the election is that the economy is everything.
And the reason the economy is everything right now is because the economy is about to go into recession if it's not already in recession.
According to Bloomberg, a U.S.
recession is effectively certain in the next 12 months.
A new Bloomberg economics model projections a blow to President Joe Biden's economic messaging ahead of the November midterms.
The latest recession probability models by Bloomberg economists Anna Wong and Eliza Winger forecast a higher recession probability across all timeframes, with the 12-month estimate of a downturn by October 23 hitting 100%.
hitting 100% that is up 65 from 65% for the comparable period in the previous update.
The model is more certain of a recession than other forecasts.
A separate Bloomberg survey of 42 economists predicts the probability of a recession over the next 12 months is now 60% up from 50% a month early.
Now remember a couple of months ago, a majority of economists were saying, ah, probably there won't be a recession.
I was saying, nope, there definitely is going to be a recession.
Now the models are beginning to match what I was telling you about.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S.
is forecast to enter a recession in the coming 12 months as the Federal Reserve battles to bring down persistently high inflation, the economy contracts, and employers cut jobs in response, according to the Wall Street Journal's latest survey of economists.
On average, economists put the probability of a recession in the next 12 months at 63%.
Their forecasts for 2023 are increasingly gloomy.
Economists now expect gross domestic product to contract in the first two quarters of the year, a downgrade from the last quarterly survey where they penciled in mild growth.
On average, the economists now predict GDP will contract at a 0.2% annual rate in the first quarter of 2023 and shrink 0.1% in the second quarter.
In July's survey, they expected a 0.8% growth rate in the first quarter and a 1% growth rate in the second.
So that is a wild... I mean, that is a significant shift.
You're talking about a shift of a full percentage point here in both the growth rate in the first quarter and the growth rate in the second quarter.
Those are big numbers.
Employers are expected to respond to lower growth and weaker profits by cutting jobs in the second and third quarters.
Economists believe nonfarm payrolls will decline by $34,000 a month on average in the second quarter, $38,000 in the third quarter.
According to the last survey, they expect employers to add about 65,000 jobs a month in those two quarters.
Again, the inability here of the Federal Reserve to achieve a soft landing after jacking up the amount of money in the economy by injecting $7 trillion into the economy and placing the interest rates at zero.
Now that you have to ramp up those interest rates spectacularly, it would be a shock if there weren't some sort of crash right here.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is trying to happy talk his way through this with a mouthful of ice cream.
Here was the president over the last couple of days.
I'm not sure that Republicans could have cut a better ad than Joe Biden with his mouthful of ice cream mumbling to people that our economy is strong as hell, in his words.
Just one more economic one.
Are you concerned about the strength of the dollar right now?
I'm not concerned about the strength of the dollar.
I'm concerned about the rest of the world.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
Our economy is going as hell.
The internals of it.
Inflation is worldwide.
It's worse off everywhere else than it is in the United States.
So, the problem is the lack of economic growth and sound policy in other countries is not so much worse.
And that's worldwide inflation.
That's consequential.
And now he's going to pretend he sees somebody.
Or does he?
No one knows.
So, the man is eating ice cream and telling you about how the economy is great.
That is almost literally a let them eat cake moment there from Joe Biden.
Let them eat Rocky Road, says Joe Biden.
So, strong stuff there from the President of the United States.
I wonder why Democrats are sinking in the polls.
Meanwhile, Karine Jean-Pierre, the wildly untalented press secretary, she says, she's asked about the Inflation Reduction Act.
Like, we were promised that it was going to reduce inflation at some point in here.
Got any plans for it to do that at all?
Here's Karine Jean-Pierre's response.
On inflation, can you give us a timeline?
You've laid out eloquently what the President's been doing.
Is there a timeline for when Americans can start feeling some economic pain or relief?
So, in regards to the Inflation Reduction Act, early next year, they will see some of the pieces of that, when you think about energy costs, when you think about the Medicare kind of benefits from that.
So we'll see some movement on that early next year.
Are you convinced?
Do you feel convinced by Corinne Jean-Pierre right there?
She seems well in control of her talking points about the strength of the American economy.
No wonder that while Democrats are slightly favored to win the U.S.
Senate in 538, those odds are dropping fairly dramatically.
Just a couple of weeks ago, those numbers were closer to 80% that Democrats were going to take the Senate.
Now they're about 64% to take the Senate.
Those numbers are going to keep coming down.
And the reason they're going to keep coming down is because again, voters are now in the late stages shifting Toward the economy, which is always what happens.
A few months before every election, there seems to be a tightening as people get distracted.
Abortion was going to be the major issue.
And then it turns out that people start going back to their pocketbooks right before an election and they blame the party in power when the economy looks bad.
According to columnist Douglas Shane and Andrew Stein for the Wall Street Journal, the Republican Party is on the cusp of a substantial midterm election victory that could rival their wins in 1994 and 2010.
There's been a three-point swing to Republicans in the generic ballot polling in just the last month, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
Democrats led by as much as 1.3 points in September.
As of Monday, Republicans were up 1.8.
A late September ABC News Washington Post poll found the Republican advantage concentrated where it's needed most.
The GOP had a five-point lead among likely voters nationwide, but a 21-point margin in competitive congressional districts.
So what that means is that, again, overall, Democrats are showing up to vote in Democratic districts, but in the swing districts, Republicans are doing really, really well.
Other battleground district polls from CBS News, Economist, YouGov, and CNN showed the GOP with a much narrower lead, but a consistent one.
So what does that mean for seats?
The House's current breakdown is 220-212 in favor of the Democrats.
There are three vacant seats.
A majority of a full House is 218.
As of Sunday, RealClearPolitics rates 221 seats as leaning, likely, or securely Republican, up to 176 for the Democrats.
There are 38 other seats that are toss-ups.
If there are no upsets on either side, and the toss-ups are evenly split, Republicans still pull out 28 seats.
A Republican sweep of the toss-up races would expand the majority to 259 to 176.
That's vanishingly unlikely, but so is a Democratic sweep of the toss-ups, which would still leave the GOP with a seven-seat majority.
So, in other words, if things sort of go as people expect, Republicans should pick up somewhere close to 30 seats.
If they go slightly better, Republicans could pick up 35 to 40 seats.
That would not be a shock in any way, shape, or form.
And it shouldn't be!
Democrats have wildly underperformed.
All they had to do was stand aside and allow things to go back to normal after President Trump left office.
Instead, they decided that they were going to embrace world-breaking politics.
The way they are defending against their incipient failure here is just by screaming at this guy.
So, Joy Reid, who is, um...
Her name is not, it does not belie her attitude.
She says, quote, Now, again, this is where I go back to the idea that the online is not the real world.
In the real world, people care about the fact that they are paying 10% more for their goods than they were last year.
student loan relief because they think giving Republicans the power to investigate Hunter Biden will bring down gas prices.
Now, again, this is where I go back to the idea that the online is not the real world.
In the real world, people care about the fact that they are paying 10% more for their goods than they were last year and a lot more than they were two years ago.
In the real world, people care about the fact that they may lose their job next year.
In the real world, businesses are looking at their future profits and they're shuddering.
In the real world, people are looking at Joe Biden's spending policy and realizing it's really, really bad.
Or they're looking at Joe Biden's foreign policy and realizing that's not particularly good either.
In Joy Reid's world, we are on the verge of literal fascism.
We're on the verge of women being reduced to the state of serfs.
Like we're going to make them work in the field and give a percentage of their earnings to the Lord.
The Republicans are going to use the right of droit de seigneur.
They're going to go back to prima nocte.
What in the world is she talking about?
But this is for people who are wildly disconnected from reality.
And it turns out that elections are not wildly disconnected from reality.
They tend to be very much connected to reality.
So what does that mean on a case-by-case basis?
So we're going to go through some of these states and we're going to look at which races are close Which ones are close that should not be close?
And which ones are basically lost causes for Democrats?
We'll get to more on this in just one moment first.
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So it is sort of fascinating.
You know, there are trend lines, and those trend lines suggest Republicans are about to do very well in the Senate, and they're about to do very well in the House.
And then, candidate quality matters an awful lot when it comes to the Senate.
So when you go state by state, what you see is that there are certain candidates who are underperforming and certain candidates who seem to be a little bit overperforming.
So in Ohio, for example, the Ohio polling right now shows that J.D.
Vance has about a two-point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average against Tim Ryan.
Tim Ryan is a congressperson from Ohio.
He ran for president last time around.
And there's no poll with Vance outside of about a four point lead.
There are very few polls with Ryan with a lead, but Vance is not ahead by a tremendous number.
He's not at 50% in any poll in the last couple of months.
The reason for that is because even though Ohio is a very red state now, I remember Donald Trump won Ohio by a significant percentage, I believe by about 10 percentage points in the last election cycle.
J.D.
Vance has run a bit of a weak race.
And the reason that J.D.
Vance has run a bit of a weak race is because, frankly, I think he's been a little bit too online.
J.D.
Vance has been responding to a lot of the accusations by Democrats that he is a racist by responding in almost Trumpian fashion in some ways.
He has been talking a lot about trade policy.
He's been talking about things that people care about on Twitter a little bit more than the stuff that he actually used to write about when he was writing Hillbillyology.
If he'd been the candidate of Hillbilly Elegy, I think he's up 10 right now.
Instead, he seems to be the candidate of sort of populist onlinedom.
Now, he can still pull out that race in Ohio, because Ohio is a very heavy red state.
He should win that race by a more significant percentage than he is currently leading that race in Ohio, however.
So, the other night, J.D.
Vance had a debate with Tim Ryan.
And it is so obvious that the advantage here lies with J.D.
Vance, because again, Tim Ryan is allied with a party that has completely failed.
And this is a point that J.D.
Vance made over and over and over again.
As for Tim Ryan, his entire schtick is, I need to tie J.D.
Vance to Donald Trump's leg.
For those who believe that Donald Trump has been a boon to Republicans in these election cycles, he has not.
He just has not.
He's been the lead point of attack.
And if you look at that New York Times poll again, what you see is that among independents who actually believe that there's a quote-unquote threat to democracy, and about 9% of independents do, they predominantly agree with Democrats that Donald Trump is the chief threat.
Okay, so what that means is that the more, as I've said before, the more people are talking about Trump going into the midterms, the worse it is for Republicans.
The more people are talking about the incompetence of Democrats going into the midterms, the better it is for Republicans.
And you can see this on a case-by-case basis.
It doesn't mean J.D.
Vance is going to lose.
I don't think he is going to lose.
I'd be shocked if he lost.
It is to say this should be a runaway race for J.D.
Vance right now.
So, take Tim Ryan's debate tactics here.
So, his debate tactic here is to try to tie J.D.
Vance to Donald Trump.
Here is Tim Ryan slamming J.D.
Vance by saying that he kissed Donald Trump's ass.
Let me just first say that this is obviously a clip that J.D.
is running to try to misrepresent people.
I ran against Nancy Pelosi, J.D., for leadership.
And you have to have the courage to take on your own leaders.
These leaders in D.C.
Why don't you vote against them?
They will eat you up like a chew toy.
Right?
I mean, you were calling Trump America's Hitler.
Then you kissed his ass.
It is true.
And then you kissed his ass, and then he endorsed you.
And you said he's the greatest president of all time.
So that's the angle for Tim Ryan.
Now, the angle for J.D.
Vance is that Tim Ryan represents a party that has completely failed.
So J.D.
Vance says, listen, you're accusing me of sucking up to Trump.
You sucked up to Nancy Pelosi, and she's the one in charge of the Congress right now.
His entire campaign is based on sucking up to the national democratic establishment And of course they support you, Tim, because you support their policies 100%.
Now here's what happened.
He says he challenged Nancy Pelosi for leadership, but then he goes on national TV and says that he loves her.
Is that the price of challenging Nancy Pelosi?
Doing it for, what, a few days before you've failed?
Like you've done with everything you've tried to get through for the people of Youngstown?
So that's the angle for J.D.
Vance.
Now, Tim Ryan made, I think, a big blunder in this debate.
He tried to attack J.D.
Vance as a racist, and J.D.
Vance responded in pretty harsh fashion, as he should, saying, listen, you don't have to be a racist to believe that there ought to be a border.
And when you call me a racist, you seem to be ignoring the fact that I have several biracial children.
We have a... Hold on, J.D.
Stop harassing me.
No, this is disgusting.
Here's exactly what happens when the media and people like Tim Ryan accuse me of engaging in the Great Replacement Theory.
You're peddling it.
I'll tell you exactly what happens, Tim.
What happens is that my own children, my biracial children, get attacked by scumbags online and in person because you are so desperate for political power That you'll accuse me, the father of three beautiful biracial babies, of engaging in racism?
We are sick of it.
You can believe in a border without being a racist.
You can believe in the country without being a racist.
And this just shows how desperate this guy is for political power.
I know you've been in office for 20 years, Tim, and I know it's a sweet gig, but you're so desperate not to have a real job that you'll slander me and slander my family.
It's disgraceful.
Okay, so more of that from J.D.
Vance, right?
That from J.D.
Vance is really spectacular stuff.
And J.D.
Vance had, listen, Tim Ryan's had his chance, right?
Tim Ryan has done this.
He's been there for a long time and he hasn't accomplished anything that he set out to accomplish here.
My simple argument is this.
That Tim Ryan's had his chance.
He's been in office for 20 years.
He's passed five pieces of legislation.
Three of those pieces of legislation were in renaming post offices in the Youngstown area.
Whenever I'm up here in the Mahoning Valley, I'm constantly approached by people who tell me that Tim Ryan has failed them and Tim Ryan has failed to do his job.
Okay, this is like, again, J.D.
Vance in this debate, I think, did a great job of reframing what this race is about.
In two weeks until the election, I think you're going to start to see J.D.
Vance pull away here, especially because Tim Ryan has to tie himself to the Democrats.
So he touted, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act, suggesting it's going to lower inflation.
That ain't going to go over big in Ohio.
This is an opportunity for us, one, to reduce inflation.
One of the big drivers, and let me first say, I know how much pain people are in at the pump, with food, It's rough.
And if you're driving anywhere, if you're a home health care worker, if you're a construction worker, it's been brutal.
And I understand that.
And that's why I've been calling for a tax cut in the short term to put money in people's pockets.
J.D.
said that that was a gimmick, but it's actually an opportunity for us to put more money in people's pockets.
The Inflation Reduction Act also drives down our deficit by $300 billion, which will help pull some money out of the economy.
Meanwhile, speaking of candidates who are doing well, over in Georgia, Brian Kemp is just shellacking Stacey Abrams.
I mean, these numbers are brutal for Stacey Abrams right now.
I'm looking at the latest Georgia gubernatorial polls, and what they show is that Brian Kemp is up on average about five and a half points.
Tref Algar has him up 9.
Insider Advantage has Kemp up 7.
The Hill Emerson has Kemp up 5.
These are bad, bad numbers for Stacey Abrams.
And again, the reason for that is because Brian Kemp has run on stuff that Georgians actually care about.
The more you run away from Twitter, right?
You don't cater to Twitter.
You don't worry about what Twitter has to say.
You're not mainly concerned with the blue checks on Twitter and what they're saying on either side.
When you do that, you tend to run successful races.
If you can somehow hit the sweet spot where you're getting both, like Ron DeSantis in Florida, you become a national figure.
But if you're just looking to win your gubernatorial seat, in Georgia, Brian Kemp was able to withstand pressure from Donald Trump, and the hatred of Donald Trump, and he was able to defeat Stacey Abrams, the beloved of the left.
I mean, that is a very durable candidacy.
And that is because when you watch Brian Kemp, basically he just says common sense things in a common sense way.
So for example, he was talking about the electoral strategies in Georgia and how the voting laws in Georgia are not disenfranchising.
People says, listen, it's easy to vote here and it's hard to cheat.
The Miss Abrams is going to do a lot of attacking of my record tonight because she doesn't want to talk about her own record.
In 2018, in the Governor's race, we had the largest African American turnout in the country.
She said that Senate Bill 202, our recent Elections Integrity Act that we passed two years ago, would be suppressive in Jim Crow 2.0.
Just this past May in our primaries, we again had record turnout in the Republican primary and the Democratic primary.
In Georgia, it's easy to vote and hard to cheat.
By the way, Gabriel Sterling, who has come under serious fire because he is the Secretary of State in Georgia.
Donald Trump attacked him a lot.
He pointed out that as of yesterday, they'd seen over 100,000 Georgians cast their votes early, which blew away the previous midterm first day record of approximately 72,000.
So much for the idea of massive voter suppression.
Meanwhile, Brian Kemp points out to Stacey Abrams, you got no sheriffs endorsing you.
I'm the guy that the police actually care about.
So if you care about crime, you ought to vote for me.
Well, I would just tell people that, look, I support safety and justice.
But Ms.
Abrams refused to answer the question, so I'll let you know that the answer is zero.
No sheriffs are endorsing her statewide because of her stances on wanting to defund the police, eliminate cash bail, and serving on the boards of organizations like the Margaret Casey Foundation that supports and gives grants to organizations that are promoting the defund the police movement.
Brian Kemp also pointed out that he kept the state open for business.
Again, this is why Brian Kemp is going to destroy Stacey Abrams, the beloved of the media.
I mean, to the point where they made her the president of the universe in Star Trek.
Well, I would remind Georgians that the first part of my plan was keeping our state open for business and allowing all business people and working Georgians to work, when Stacey Abrams was criticizing me for doing that.
Also pushing to get our kids back in the classroom, when again, Stacey Abrams was criticizing me for doing that.
A lot of Georgians, including African Americans and other minorities, cannot go to work if their kids are not in the classroom.
I mean, this is all good stuff here from Brian Kemp, obviously.
Meanwhile, there's another race going on in Georgia, and that is the race between Walker and Warnock for Raphael Warnock's Senate seat, which he never would have won if Donald Trump hadn't intervened in the Georgia Senate race in January of 2021.
So Raphael Warnock right now, in the RealClearPolitics polling average, is up about three percentage points, but the last two polls have this thing well within margin of error.
Warnock plus two, Warnock plus one.
They had a debate the other night, did Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker.
Herschel Walker, I thought, did a fairly decent job.
I thought that he really attempted to refocus the debate on Warnock.
The big problem with Herschel Walker is because of all his baggage, a lot of the focus has been on Herschel Walker.
It's possible that if he refocuses the last couple of weeks and he just keeps saying the same lines over and over, that he can sort of drag himself to victory based on the fact that Brian Kemp also will provide a tailwind for him.
There'll be less ballot splitting, perhaps, than there otherwise would be.
In this debate, for example, Herschel Walker kept claiming repeatedly that he's running because Raphael Warnock and Joe Biden are the same.
It is very clear that my opponent would rather be running against anybody except me.
I'm happy to run against you.
There are only two people who are going to sit in this seat.
Either me or my opponent.
And I think this race is about who's ready to represent the people of Georgia.
And I'm thinking about them every single day.
But if he cut from the same cloth at 96% of the time, I'm running he and Joe Biden because they're the same.
Well, first of all, I'm glad that we're standing up to Putin's aggression.
And we have to continue to stand up.
and Herschel Walker sort of interjected, yeah, no, you laid down for Joe Biden.
Well, first of all, I'm glad that we are standing up to Putin's aggression.
And we have to continue to stand up, which is why I stood up to the Biden administration when it suggested that we should close the Savannah Combat Readiness Training Center.
I told the President that was the exact wrong thing to do at the exact wrong time.
Well, Senator, why not say he stood up?
He not stood up to Biden.
If he was standing up, he wouldn't have voted with him 96% of the time, which gave us an open border, which gave us high inflation, which gave us crime in the streets.
And you're talking about standing up?
He didn't stand up.
He had laid down every time it came around.
And you know that, Senator.
Now, meanwhile, again, the big issue for Herschel Walker is just the fact that Herschel Walker is a really volatile candidate.
For the voters watching tonight, can you explain the circumstances surrounding these claims?
You have 60 seconds.
Now, are they going to decide the election?
No.
But would this election be a lot easier if Herschel Walker did not have those stories?
Of course, here is Walker denying the abortion allegations, paying for an abortion some 10 to 15 years ago.
He denied those allegations on the stage.
For the voters watching tonight, can you explain the circumstances surrounding these claims?
You have 60 seconds.
Well, as I said, that's a lie.
And you know, what most think, I put it in a book.
One thing about my life is I've been very transparent.
Not like the Senator.
He's hid things.
But at the same time, I said, that's a lie.
And on abortion, you know, I'm a Christian.
I believe in life.
And I tell people this, Georgia is a state that respects life, and I'll be a Senator that protects life.
And then of course, there was the moment in which Herschel Walker, attempting to rip on Raphael Warnock's relationship with the police, pulled his police badge.
Here's what that looked like.
One thing I have not done, I've never pretended to be a police officer, and I've never threatened a shootout with the police.
And now I have to respond to that.
We are moving on, gentlemen.
No, no, no, I have to respond to that.
And you know what's so funny?
I am with many police officers.
So here's the bottom line.
Candidate Quality Matters, Brian Kemp, is going to run away with the governor's race in Georgia in the same race.
It's going to be a dogfight between Hershel Walker and Raphael Warnock.
If you're asking me who I think is going to win that thing, I actually think the Walker is going to pull that one out.
It's very close right now.
I think on day of you're going to get very, very high Republican turnout.
You're going to get a little bit depressed Democratic turnout.
And what that says to me is that Raphael Warnock may exit the Senate, even though Hershel Walker is not a particularly good candidate.
Now, meanwhile, again, as I say, one of the things that is, that is noticeable is candidate quality in state after state.
So Nevada, Nevada is a state that leans Democrat.
Nevada is a purple to blue state.
And in the current Nevada Senate race, right now, Adam Laxalt has a slight lead over Catherine Cortez Masto.
In that particular race, out of the last six polls, Laxalt leads five of them.
He has about a 1.7% Advantage on Cortez Masto.
Cortez Masto is trailing so badly at this point.
She's having such a bad run of it that she's still running introduction to herself ads at this late stage in the campaign.
And remember, she's the incumbent.
You shouldn't have to run, hey, remember me ads at the late stage of the campaign, but that's exactly what she has to do because Laxalt has done a good job sort of pinning her down.
Here's Cortez Masto's ad.
Some of my favorite memories are from around this table.
Aunts.
Cousins.
All of us sharing dinners at my grandmother's.
Hearing stories about how so many came to this country, worked hard, and raised our family.
Everything I am is thanks to them.
It's what drives me to stand up for hardworking Nevadans.
To lower costs.
And to put families first.
I'm Catherine Cortez Masto, and I'll never forget where I come from.
That's why I approve this message.
Okay, so again, she is running as a moderate.
Notice how far away she's running from sort of the typical Democratic rhetoric here.
I'm here to lower costs, and I'm here to make sure that families have food to keep on the table.
Again, this is all very rote kind of stuff.
Meanwhile, Adam Laxalt, the Republican, is running ads that are going straight to the heart of what voters want to hear.
Here's Adam Laxalt.
I'm Adam Laxalt and I approve this message.
Catherine Cortez Masto pretends to support law enforcement.
But voted to rubber stamp radical officials.
Including activists who refused to prosecute drug dealers.
And supported defunding police.
Cortez Masto called police racist.
And when a local officer was shot in the head.
During riots she encouraged.
She didn't say a word.
We retract our endorsement.
We retract our endorsement.
We retract our endorsement of Catherine Cortez Masto.
Catherine Cortez Masto is dangerous for police.
And dangerous for Nevada.
Okay, that's a pretty hard-hitting ad there from the Republicans.
And of course, Laxalt has made Cortez Masto the issue in that particular race.
So again, another one of these rules here.
Candidate quality matters.
Also, if you have a good candidate, they're capable of shifting the focus onto the person on the other side of the aisle.
And that's actually what is happening right now in Wisconsin as well.
We'll get some more on this in just a second.
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Alrighty, so, other states that are up for grabs right now.
That Wisconsin Senate race between Ron Johnson, who's the incumbent, and Mandela Barnes, the current Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin.
That one is also close, but Johnson seems to now be opening a very significant gap.
In the latest Marquette poll, Johnson is up 6.
CBS News' YouGov has Johnson up 1.
Fox News has Johnson up 5.
Again, this was a race that Democrats thought that they had locked up just a few months ago, when Barnes was up 5 to 7 points in this particular race.
As the election has gotten closer, people have begun to refocus their minds a little bit on what actually matters to them.
And you can see the difference between Mandela Barnes and Ron Johnson, what their focus is, in the way that they went after each other in their latest Senate debate.
So here's Mandela Barnes, here's his closing statement at the debate.
I really appreciate this opportunity, and while the Senator wants to lie and distract and hide from his own record, and while he subscribes to the politics of division, what he doesn't realize is that each and every one of us in all 72 counties in this state has so much more in common with each other than we'll ever have with self-serving, out-of-touch politicians.
Now, unfortunately, for the last 12 years, we've experienced the failures of his leadership and his representation.
Women's lives and women's health are on the line.
For our veterans who may have been victims of burn pits, you don't want a senator who's going to play politics with your life.
For our retirees, we don't want a person who's going to take your retirement away from you, what you've worked hard for your entire life.
Working people live with the constant threat of their jobs being shipped out of state or overseas.
Our democracy hangs in the balance.
What you heard there from Mandela Barnes is joy-read scaremongering, right?
You got the abortion, you got he's going to take your Medicare away, he's going to take your Medicaid away, all the rest of this kind of stuff.
Meanwhile, Ron Johnson is slamming Joe Biden on spending, which again is an idea that I think is going to go over a lot better with the voters of Wisconsin than Mandela Barnes talking about, for example, abortion or January 6th.
To understand what caused these 40-year high inflation rates.
It's out of control deficit spending.
I voted against most of it.
But, unfortunately, President Biden, when he came into office, put forward another $1.9 trillion COVID relief package when we had a trillion and a quarter left unspent from the previous COVID relief packages.
You can hear the real contrast between Johnson and Barnes when it comes to policing.
So the solution is stop the deficit spending, stop growing our debt. But understand that every dollar you held at the start of the Biden administration is now worth only 88.3 cents.
It's crushing everyone, but it's particularly crushing seniors on a fixed income.
You can hear the real contrast between Johnson and Barnes when it comes to policing. So Johnson's main focus is Mandela, you helped incite riots in Kenosha.
And Mandela Barnes's response is, Well, January 6th ain't gonna cut as much ice as, you know, they burned down an entire city in Wisconsin while Lieutenant Governor and Governor did very little about it.
This is also telling.
I mean, look at Ron Johnson's ad against Mandela Barnes on the same topic.
Breaking news in Dallas, Texas, where at least five police officers were killed when they were ambushed.
This was the deadliest day for U.S.
law enforcement since 9-11.
Just days after this horrific crime, Mandela Barnes appeared on Vladimir Putin's propaganda news outlet and rationalized violence against American police officers.
Police officers are overexercising their badness.
This probably was a retaliatory attack.
Do you want Mandela Barnes representing you in the Senate?
I'm Ron Johnson and I approve this message.
That policing ad is going to be effective.
That is why Ron Johnson is starting to pull away in that race.
Meanwhile, in Arizona, you're starting to see the same sort of effect that you're seeing in Georgia.
In the governor's race, a candidate is doing better.
And in the senatorial race, a candidate is doing worse.
One, Kerry Lake in Arizona is doing better because it turns out that she's actually very talented on the campaign trail in a way that Blake Masters may not be.
In that polling right now, Kerry Lake is up just slightly in this race.
And she's tied in the CBS YouGov poll with Katie Hobbs, she's up three points in the Ohio Predictive Insights poll, and in the Fox 10 Insider Advantage poll, she's up three points as well.
That is because, again, Carrie Lake, even her opponents will acknowledge that she's excellent on TV, that she knows how to work a room, she knows how to work a camera.
There's a very bizarre article from The Atlantic trying to rip into Carrie Lake, but even the author of the article, Elaine Godfrey, who seems to need to smoke a cigarette after writing this thing, here's how she describes following around Lake's campaign.
She says, quote, the way Lake has imitated Trump's rhetoric is obvious, but as I've followed her in the months since, something else has become clear. She's much better at this than Trump's other emulators. That makes sense, given her first career in front of the camera, cultivating trust among thousands of Maricopa County viewers. But this is more than an imitation. Lake has made MAGA her own. She's agile as a politician in a way that other high-profile Trump-endorsed candidates are not. She's more likable than Senate hopefuls like Blake Masters or J.D. Vance.
Lake is neck and neck in her race in Arizona.
She arguably has a better chance than any other famous Trump endorsee this cycle.
She really is the candidate that Trump picked who is doing the best, and most clearly doing the best.
Again, J.D.
Vance may win his seat in Ohio, but he's underperforming the Republican general percentage of the electorate.
In Ohio, Hershel Walker is running neck and neck in a race that really should be easy for Republicans to win in Georgia.
Dr. Oz is running a very neck and neck race in Pennsylvania, as we'll get to in just one moment.
But, Carrie Lake happens to be.
Again, you'll run across candidates like this.
Candidate quality matters.
She's uniquely talented.
Listen to how this Atlantic author describes Carrie Lake.
Lake stood so close I could see the different shades of brown in her irises.
Sweat dripped down my back.
I've read your work, she said.
There's a seductive power to Lake's voice.
Deep but feminine.
Firm, even severe but smooth.
Like black tea with a little honey.
What?
But again, either Carrie Lake is an excellent candidate or this lady's got a screw loose.
But bottom line here is that Katie Hobbs, who's running against Carrie Lake, she also made a huge boo-boo here because she actually ducked a debate and then got fact-checked on it.
And she said that Lake had ducked an interview and she got fact-checked on it by Dana Bash of CNN.
Look, Carrie Lake has made it clear time and time again that she's not interested in having substantive, in-depth conversations about the issues that matter to Arizonans.
She only wants a scenario where she can control the dialogue, and she's refused to sit down in a one-on-one lengthy conversation to really clarify with Arizonans where she is on the issues.
She's the one who's afraid of talking to voters where she's at, and we are doing everything we can to take To make our case directly to the voters of Arizona.
She just came and sat down with me and answered my questions for a lot of minutes.
Yeah.
A lot of Democrats are questioning your decision and they're saying, you know, it's the wrong decision.
President Biden's former 2020 co-chair said, I would debate and I would want the people of Arizona to know what my platform is.
If you think she's as dangerous as you're saying to democracy, is it your responsibility as a candidate who wants to run Arizona to show and explain who their alternative is?
Yeah, I mean, that's Dana Bash basically fact checking Katie Hobbs.
So Carrie Lake is benefiting from the fact that she's very good on TV.
She's also benefiting from the fact that obviously her opponent is very terrible on TV.
We haven't barely talked about the Democrats in these races, but Katie Hobbs is a particularly awful candidate.
Meanwhile, in the Arizona Senate race, Mark Kelly is up on Blake Masters.
That lead has been fairly consistent over time.
It was a lot bigger, I would say, mid-September.
Mid-September, Kelly was up about six points on Blake Masters today.
He's up about four and a half points on Blake Masters.
Masters seems to be closing the gap a little bit.
It's not quite close enough yet.
The polls would have to be significantly off in order for Masters to claim that seat right now.
He did have a good debate with Mark Kelly the other day.
In that debate, he went after Mark Kelly for his record.
Here was Blake Masters.
He's the 50th vote in the U.S.
Senate.
Joe Biden needed his vote.
Mark Kelly, a year ago, could have dug his heels in and said, Mr. President, I'm not supporting a single thing, not a single spending bill, not a single piece of your agenda, unless and until we get border security.
Biden would have had to secure the border.
Mark Kelly, if this is the result of Senator Kelly being focused on the border, my gosh, he's the most ineffective and worst senator of all time.
Now again, this is the right message for Blake Masters to be promoting.
The problem is that the ads that he has been promoting up till now have been issue ads that actually don't cut in his favor.
So for example, I'm not sure why he thought that this was, for example, a very good ad.
250,000 illegals cross this border every month.
This is an invasion.
We know what to do.
We need to finish Trump's wall.
We need five times more border patrol.
And we need technology to lock this border down.
If we don't do these things right now, we're not going to have a country.
I'm Blake Masters, and I approve this message.
President Trump endorsed me because he knows that I'm going to secure this border.
Now again, Donald Trump did not win Arizona.
I mean, it is worth noting here that in the last election, Donald Trump did not win Arizona and his approval ratings in Arizona are not ridiculously high.
So Blake Masters citing Donald Trump twice in an ad about immigration and then adding sort of the hero music.
I like, I understand it's cool looking and it looks like the trailer for a film, but it really is not an ad that is going to get those suburban housewives to vote for Blake Masters.
Meanwhile, Mark Kelly's ads are aimed directly at those people, right?
Mark Kelly's ads are all soft and And twinkly.
Like, if you're gonna cut an ad about yourself, the general rule, if you are in a purple state, is you cut soft ads about yourself and really hardcore ads about your opponent.
You don't cut hardcore ads about yourself and then not much about your opponent.
Most of your ads actually shouldn't feature you, they should feature your opponent.
But here's an ad, like, look, this is a good ad by Mark Kelly, because, again, it completely obscures who he is, the guy who votes with Joe Biden 96% of the time.
I'm the mayor of Mesa and a Republican.
The last few years have been tough on our local businesses and our community needed help.
That's when I heard from Mark Kelly.
We may be from different political parties, but that doesn't matter for Mark.
For him, we're all on Team Arizona.
That's who Mark is.
He secured critical funding to help save our small businesses.
Mark doesn't look for ways to blame Democrats or Republicans.
He looks for a way forward.
I'm Mark Kelly and I approve this message.
Okay, again, that ad obscures who Mark Kelly is, but it basically makes me sound like a Republican, right? All these Republicans were endorsing him, he's bipartisan and all the rest. And then in the debate, this was Mark Kelly's angle on Masters, right? His angle on Masters is that Masters is kind of an extremist upstart. That's got to be the pitch.
And Mark Kelly is running a better campaign than he's being given credit for in Arizona, where really he should be on the losing end. Here's Kelly. I think we all know guys like this. You know, guys that think they know better than everyone about everything.
You know, you think you know better than women and doctors about abortion.
You even think you know better than seniors about Social Security, and you think you know better than veterans about how to win a war.
Folks, we all know guys like this, and we can't be letting them make decisions about us because it's just dangerous.
Okay, so if you're gonna ballpark this race, even though, listen, I like Blake Masters personally, I like a lot of his ideas.
With that said, I think Blake Masters is one of the weaker candidates on the Republican side of the aisle this time.
So when you look at that math again, Republicans have essentially 47 Senate seats that are very likely to be winners, including J.D.
Vance.
That means the Republicans need to take four of the following seats.
They need to take four from these.
Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
I believe they will take North Carolina, that's one.
I believe that they're going to take Wisconsin, that's two.
I believe they're going to take Nevada, that's three. Okay, so that leaves, they need to win one of the following three, Georgia, Arizona, or Pennsylvania. Georgia, Arizona, or Pennsylvania. If they are capable of taking Georgia, then all the rest of this becomes a wash, but that one is dicey.
Arizona's looking increasingly dicey.
It looks like Mark Kelly is in better position with Nancy, which brings us to Pennsylvania.
And this, of course, is highly watched mainly because here we have a very high profile Republican Senate candidate in Dr. Oz running against a guy who had a full-on stroke in the middle of this campaign and cannot speak clearly on the campaign trail.
He also happens to be an extraordinary radical.
Now, all the focus at the beginning of this campaign was on Dr. Oz.
It seems as though the worm has turned and all the focus is now on John Fetterman, which is why I believe that Dr. Oz is going to win this seat.
I think that in the end, the people of Pennsylvania are going to move away from Fetterman simply because Fetterman does not seem like he can hold it together.
Plus, he actually happens to be pretty radical.
Right now, the latest polls, including one from Daily Wire, my site, Trafalgar, show Federman is up just two, and the margin of error is 2.9.
There's a poll from the Hill Emerson, Fetterman up two, Margin Vera three.
So this thing is basically a dead heat at this point.
And there's a reason for that.
Again, Fetterman happens to be a radical candidate, but most of the criticism of Fetterman has been of the fact that he may not be mentally able at this point.
Again, John Fetterman, he refuses to put out any of his doctor's notes on his current status.
Now, if those notes were good, you think he'd be waiting for more than five seconds to put those out?
They can't be good.
Here's a bit of what John Fetterman has looked like over the past few weeks.
Being anti-union is anti-American.
What is wrong with demanding for an easy, safe kind of their income a path to a safe place for them to win?
Excuse me, to work.
Please understand the stakes in this race.
Send me to Washington D.C.
to send, so I can work with Senator Casey and I can champion the union way of life in Jersey, excuse me, in D.C.
Who would have ever thought that, who would ever think that I would be The normal one in the race area.
I gave away the lieutenant governor-governor in Pennsylvania, the only lieutenant governor in the history to do that.
And you can count on us to eliminate the filibuster and let's get some stuff done for America.
If you come out and step with us, We will be able to stand with you in D.C.
In fact, it's so bad that John Fetterman's wife actually came out over the last couple of days and called for NBC to apologize to John Fetterman.
Why?
Because NBC News' Dasha Burns conducted an interview with Fetterman and said, well, during some of those conversations before the closed captioning was rolling, it wasn't clear he could understand what we were saying.
So Fetterman's wife came out and said, I'd love to see an apology toward the disabled community from her and from her network for the damage they've caused.
So wait, is John Fetterman a part of the disabled community?
I was told that he's totally fine and that everything is totally hunky-dory at this point.
So that's just his medical condition.
And by the way, how bad is Fetterman's medical condition as an issue?
It's so bad that one of his new ads, he basically leaves off the ad by saying that he has a stroke and that's why he knows that people need more time at home.
I'm not kidding.
That's his brand new ad.
After my stroke, I was just grateful to see Giselle and our kids.
Across Pennsylvania, I keep seeing families that don't have enough time to focus on each other.
They're struggling.
Left behind.
We've got to make it easier for people to spend time with those they love.
Politicians spend so much time fighting about the things that don't matter.
I'll always be focused on what does.
Access to health care.
Lower costs.
Good jobs.
More time with those we love.
I'm John Fetterman and I approve this message.
Meanwhile, Dr. Oz is doing, again, what a typical candidate would do in a purple state.
He is running toward the middle.
So here is Dr. Oz's latest ad, talking about moderation versus extremism.
I've been thinking a lot about family and the next generation.
Today's kids aren't safe in our communities.
Inflation's making it harder to buy a house to start a family.
Guys like John Fetterman take everything to the extreme.
Why are we letting murderers out?
Why is the solution always tax and spend?
Extremism on both sides makes things worse.
We need balance.
Less extremism in Washington.
I'm running for Senate to improve people's lives.
That's what doctors do.
I'm Dr. Oz.
I approve this message.
Okay, so again, you're seeing Dr. Oz do the things he needs to do to win.
He's moving toward the center in the last couple of weeks of the election, and all the focus is on Federman.
This is why I think that Republicans are going to take Pennsylvania.
Okay, now, there's still a couple of wildcards out there.
So, you have New Hampshire.
New Hampshire is a possible wildcard.
Right now, the polling in New Hampshire is not remarkably close.
I thought this race was going to be closer than it is going to be right now by the polling and that is probably because of the nomination of Don Balduck who is a veteran but has a checkered past in terms of saying rather wild things about Donald Trump in election 2020.
Maggie Hassan right now who is very vulnerable and definitely could have lost that race.
She's running well above 50 percent in the latest poll from Fabrizio Anzalone.
She's up seven.
By averages, she's up by about 6 points.
Those are not great numbers if you're going into the election, which we are.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, the Republicans were putting a lot of faith in the idea that Joe O'Day was going to somehow be able to take on Michael Bennett.
And for a brief moment in time, it appeared that there was a narrowing in this particular race, but that moment in time seems to have passed.
Bennett right now is up in the latest polling data, 6, 9, and 6.
He's up 7.7% overall over Joe O'Day.
Now it does not help at all that Donald Trump decided to intervene in that race.
He's mad because Joe O'Day is saying that he is not a Trumpy guy.
And so Trump put out a full statement about how Joe O'Day is a terrible person and he hopes he loses, which of course is wildly helpful.
And we've already seen at least two Georgia Senate seats go down to flaming defeat because of a Donald Trump in 2020.
So, intervening in the Colorado race, he's not going to be the reason that Joe O'Day loses if Joe O'Day loses, but he's certainly not helping.
You don't want the former president of the United States so concerned with what a random Senate candidate in Colorado is saying about him that he is now handing the seat back to Michael Bennett.
By the way, I'm not sure that Michael Bennett likes Donald Trump more than Joe O'Day does, although he's probably going to owe more to Donald Trump than Joe O'Day does.
Okay, meanwhile, there's one other seat That is now in apparently hot water, possibly for Republicans.
That, of course, is the seat in Utah.
So this is one that really should not even be close, right?
Mike Lee won his last election with like 70% of the vote.
But right now, the polling seems to be drawing a lot closer.
I don't think that this is going to fall out of Republicans' favor, in favor of Evan McMuffin.
But Democrats and Independents are apparently placing their hopes on Evan McMuffin.
You remember him.
He tried to run against Trump in 2016, failed dramatically.
According to Axios, McMullen is challenging incumbent GOP Senator Mike Lee.
They do have a debate.
McMullen is an anti-Trump so-called conservative, but he's going to caucus with the Democrats.
He's challenging Senator Lee, who is an incumbent.
Senator Lee is a constitutional conservative.
He votes in extraordinarily limited government ways.
The big problem in this particular race is that Lee has not been endorsed by Mitt Romney.
So Mitt Romney's been sitting out there doing his holier-than-thou routine with regard to Mike Lee.
Nobody really understands why.
Nobody really understands why exactly Mitt Romney would want Evan McMuffin to be in that seat, caucusing with the Democrats, possibly handing control of the Senate over to the Democrats.
There was a Deseret News-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll released last week that found that 41% of registered voters said they would cast a ballot for Lee.
37% said they would vote for Evan McMullin.
McMullen tries to suggest, of course, that Lee was sort of in league with Donald Trump to overthrow the election result.
Utah's Democrats have now voted to back McMullen over one of their own during the primaries to increase their chances of defeating Mike Lee.
That's because Utah's utens will not elect Democrats to the United States Senate.
The Senate race comes six years after McMullin tried to run for president in 2016.
He did get 21.5% of votes in Utah, which is the highest support for an independent presidential candidate since 1992 when Ross Perot was running.
Lee is still in the driver's seat, pretty obviously.
But the simple fact that Mitt Romney refuses once again to endorse Lee is really extraordinary.
Again, I've defended Romney from time to time when I think that he's doing stuff based on principle.
I don't understand the principle of you support the guy who's going to support the Democrats.
I don't get it at all.
Romney apparently had made it clear for months that he would stay neutral in Lee's run for a third term against McMullin.
It was not swayed, according to the Washington Post, by state GOP chairman Carson Jorgensen, who said he pressed Lee's case with Romney earlier this year and again last week with Romney's staff.
A Republican candidate should be supporting their Republican colleagues.
That's all there is to it, Jorgensen said in an interview.
Now, Lee on national television has urged Romney to reconsider in the final weeks.
All 48 of my other Republican colleagues are on board with me.
It's not too late, Mitt.
Apparently the stalemate over Romney's endorsement appears unchanged.
This is madness.
And meanwhile, Romney, his team is now leaking to the Washington Post.
Romney aides irked by Lee Plee for support, highlighting GOP- Why exactly should he be irked?
Why doesn't he just support him?
What exactly is supposed to be the big complaint about Mike Lee?
Okay, so supposedly the complaint is that Mike Lee was texting with people inside the Trump administration.
He voted to certify Trump's loss last year.
He told Mark Meadows the states had not given lawmakers legal grounds to object and that they needed the Constitution on our side.
Apparently that wasn't enough for either Mitt Romney or for Evan McMuffin.
And so McMuffin tried to basically lie and suggest that Lee had betrayed the Constitution.
Here's McMullen in debate.
But for you to talk about the importance of the Electoral College, I think, is rich.
I think you know exactly how important it is, and I think you knew how important it was when you sought to urge the White House that had lost an election to find fake electors to overturn the will of the people.
Senator Lee, that was the most egregious betrayal of our nation's Constitution in its history by a U.S.
Senator, I believe, and it will be your legacy.
Okay, so he did vote, but again, McMullen apparently is attempting to push this position anyway.
Lee then responded by saying, basically, you vote for McMullen, you're voting for the Democrats, which of course is true.
You have sought for, actively courted, and obtained the endorsement of the Democratic Party.
You've raised millions of dollars from ActBlue, the database on which far-left, progressive, socialist, Democratic donors can be found.
And then you have, in the last quarter alone, spent $1.6 million feeding the Democratic industrial complex.
So it's not surprising to me that you would come here today and spout not only lies, but lies that are specific to the leftist cause, lies that are specific to the Democratic Party, and lies that certainly are not applicable to me.
So bottom line is, so I think that Mike Lee's gonna lose that seat.
I would be very doubtful that Mike Lee loses that seat.
The fact that it has come down to this at all is kind of a ridiculous situation, given how red Utah is, and given the fact that Mitt Romney could solve all of this simply by moving along here.
But Mitt Romney apparently won't.
Once again, the sort of holier-than-thou here is rather astonishing, because Mike Lee did vote in favor of the certification of the election.
All right, we've reached the end of today's show.
We'll be back here with much, much more tomorrow.
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