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State of the Union Preview
00:02:07
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| The president because a lot of Democrats said he's breaking the law on so many issues. | ||
| And then in the backdrop of the 2028 race, where a lot of those Democrats are going to say, yes, he should be impeached. | ||
| Leaders don't want to impeach because they know how that ends. | ||
| We've already seen that twice. | ||
| So in 30 seconds, as we close, what are you looking forward to in the next month, two months, and obviously the next 12 months? | ||
| I'm looking forward to the State of the Union, how President Trump talks about his first year in office and where they're going and if he unveils any new initiatives. | ||
| Does he want 2,000? | ||
| He's talked about passing legislation that would give everybody $2,000, or a lot of people $2,000 in their back pocket. | ||
| Remains to be seen if that could be passed. | ||
| And then the landscape as the campaign takes shape. | ||
| A long way to go between now and the election, but right now, I've talked to a number of people and they think the House, if the election were today, which it's not, the House would flip back to Democrats and the Senate would remain in Republican hands. | ||
| So we could be looking at divided government in 2027. | ||
| Bob Cusack, Executive Editor of the Washington Examiner. | ||
| Thank you so much for your time this week. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I really enjoyed it. | ||
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unidentified
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A live look this afternoon at the White House briefing room where we're expecting President Trump to come to take reporter questions. | |
| We'll have live coverage on our companion network, C-SPAN2, when it gets underway. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us now to talk all things Senate is Senate and Governor's Editor for Cook Political Report, Jessica Taylor. | ||
| Jessica, thanks so much for being with us this morning. | ||
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Who Will Take Osoff's Seat?
00:11:59
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| Thanks for having me. | ||
| All right, let's dive right in. | ||
| Obviously, this is going to be a busy year for the Senate midterm elections and the House. | ||
| Remind our audience, though, what control of Senate currently looks like, and how many seats do Democrats need to win to take back control? | ||
| Right now, Democrats, or Republicans rather, have a 52-48 majority, and they need four seats in order to flip that. | ||
| And the number of seats that are up, Republicans have more seats up, but they're in safer seats. | ||
| And so that four is really difficult to do because there's only one Republican-held seat that is up in a state that Kamala Harris won, which is Maine Susan Collins. | ||
| And even though she sits in a blue state, she has won election after election despite that. | ||
| The next possible pickup that we rate as a Tosh Up is in North Carolina, where Chuck Schumer successfully recruited former Governor Roy Cooper into the race. | ||
| You have former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Watley running there. | ||
| And then beyond those two, you have to go into double-digit Trump states. | ||
| So they are looking at states like Ohio, where they did get former Senator Sherrod Brown to run, or Alaska, where just last week former Congresswoman Mary Peltola announced. | ||
| But then Democrats also have their own states that they're defending. | ||
| They're defending an open seat in Michigan that has a very crowded and potentially contentious Democratic primary that's not going to be decided until August. | ||
| They're defending Georgia with John Osoff. | ||
| I was going to ask you about Georgia here, that seat held by Democrat John Osoff. | ||
| Who is challenging him and what are the risks to Ofsoff in that seat? | ||
| Obviously, we know he won it during a special election, I believe, before. | ||
| Walk us through that race. | ||
| Yeah, so this is a place where Republicans didn't get their number one recruit that they wanted, who was former or current governor Brian Kemp, who is term limited. | ||
| So there is a three-way primary right now happening between two congressmen, Buddy Carter, who represents the Savannah area, Mike Collins, who represents the Athens area, and then former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley. | ||
| Now Dooley has Kemp's endorsement, but he's a newcomer to politics. | ||
| Carter's put in a lot of his own money. | ||
| Collins has gotten a lot of county chairman and different things across the state. | ||
| So this is the primary is still pretty up in the air. | ||
| Trump has not weighed in here. | ||
| And as we see in most Republican primaries, that can be really determinative if he decides to. | ||
| Now, how much did Trump win Georgia by? | ||
| And what is a risk to Osoff, no matter who wins the Republican primary on his side? | ||
| Osoff is obviously running in a very Trumpy state. | ||
| Yes, he is. | ||
| But I mean, again, you know, Trump lost it in 2020 very narrowly, won it again in 2024. | ||
| So, but this is in a midterm election like we saw, like we saw with Raphael Warnock that won that seat in 2022. | ||
| It went to a runoff. | ||
| That could happen again. | ||
| They've still got to get to 50% plus one if there's more candidates in that race. | ||
| But Osoff has amassed a massive war chest. | ||
| He's been able to do that because he doesn't have a Democratic primary challenger. | ||
| He's been a prodigious fundraiser. | ||
| So Osoff, I think, is sitting better in this position than we believe that he might have been, say, at the beginning of 2025. | ||
| So this seat, I think, is looking better for Democrats in that regard because Republicans have a messy primary still. | ||
| Osoff has been able to amass money. | ||
| In midterm years, we do see potentially higher black turnout in the Atlanta area and things to all things. | ||
| And if that Trump base stays home in a midterm election, if they're very frustrated with him, as we see polls indicate, that can certainly help Osoff. | ||
| Now let's turn a little bit further away from Georgia to Michigan. | ||
| The current Democrat in that Senate seat, Gary Peters, is retiring, creating an open seat. | ||
| Who is running to fill it? | ||
| And what is the current polling there? | ||
| So right now you have really a reverse of what happened in 2024, which was also an open seat when Debbie Stabenow retired. | ||
| And Democrats coalesced behind Alyssa Slotkin versus Republicans had a primary there. | ||
| The opposite is happening right now. | ||
| The 2024 nominee, former Congressman Mike Rogers, is running again. | ||
| Now he narrowly, very narrowly lost that seat, but it was at the same time that Trump, of course, won Michigan. | ||
| So he underperformed Trump. | ||
| So he needs to get back out Trump voters that is typically more difficult in a midterm environment than we have seen in Michigan. | ||
| But he is currently very narrowly leading the Democratic challengers in polls. | ||
| But Democrats have a three-way primary that, again, isn't going to be resolved until August. | ||
| And so you have current Congresswoman Haley Stevens running. | ||
| She's seen as the choice of the Democratic establishment. | ||
| She formerly worked on the auto bailouts and things. | ||
| And then you have State Senator Mallory McMorrow. | ||
| She sort of went viral for a House floor speech. | ||
| So she's sort of running a sort of a new progressive in a way. | ||
| And then further left in the progressive lane, you have former Wayne County Health Chief Abdul Al-Syed. | ||
| He's been endorsed by Bernie Sanders. | ||
| You know, I think that Stevens and probably McMorrow would not endanger this seat, but I think that Al-Syed, if he were the nominee, that could really pose a problem for Democrats. | ||
| And I know we talked a little bit about Maine before. | ||
| Obviously, Susan Collins has won statewide time and time again, despite difficult races, despite people really doubting her in some of those races. | ||
| A moderate there. | ||
| She also is running right now uncontested, though it's said that Trump has advocated for folks to jump in on that race against her. | ||
| But she's facing two Democrats in the race, or there are two Temple running in the primary over there. | ||
| Can you break down that race for us? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| This is another place where Chuck Schumer got his favorite recruit in the current governor, Janet Mills, who's seen as more of a moderate. | ||
| But Graham Plattner, an oysterman there in Maine, also running Bernie Sanders' endorsement, running as a full-throated progressive, has really sort of captured lightning in a bottle there in Maine. | ||
| Now, there's been a lot of things that have come out against him. | ||
| He had a Nazi-inspired tattoo. | ||
| He made a lot of questionable Reddit posts. | ||
| I think in a pre-Trump era, a lot of these things would have sunk candidates, but that has not happened with him. | ||
| I think he still has a lot of support in the Democratic primary. | ||
| We've sort of seen competing polls. | ||
| Some polls, his own internals, have him up in the primary. | ||
| We've seen polls with Mills up. | ||
| We've seen polls with him very close. | ||
| I think that, you know, once we get closer to the primary this summer, I think that we'll see better polling, really. | ||
| You know, there's sort of a question of who would run better. | ||
| I think the National Democrats obviously want Mills to be the nominee there, given that she has won before, that she's won independents in those places. | ||
| She was a well-liked governor. | ||
| Right. | ||
| She is. | ||
| I mean, again, she's more moderate, certainly, but she's been able to win those independents that Collins has been able to win. | ||
| And really, the funny thing is, is they're friends. | ||
| I mean, you know, that they get along very well. | ||
| I think, you know, she really got a lot of criticism from Plattner even for saying, you know, that at one point Collins was doing the best job that she could. | ||
| Now she's begun to criticize her more there. | ||
| But so I think there's really a question of do they need sort of this progressive enthusiasm to kind of unite Democrats and even pull over independents to finally beat Collins, or do they need sort of that more moderate candidate to unite independents and even perhaps pull over some Republicans? | ||
| And of course, Trump has, as you mentioned, criticized her over the Venezuela vote and different things. | ||
| There's kind of competing theories over whether that hurts her or helps her. | ||
| I think it helps her in a way that you can point toward with Democrats that have voted for, that she can point toward and say, look, I'm not in lockstep with the president, even though she voted for a lot of his nominees, which is the criticism that they will use against her. | ||
| And listen, she, you know, her Supreme Court votes and things too have not really been litigated in a post-Dobbs world. | ||
| They used that against her in 2020, but that was before the Dobbs decision in 2022. | ||
| So this is the first time she's on the ballot in a post-roe being overturned world. | ||
| That's a really interesting point, specifically because Maine is a very, you know, interesting state. | ||
| It kind of has a similar political makeup as, say, like New Hampshire. | ||
| Obviously, they're in a similar area. | ||
| I wonder, are there issues in the state in Maine that differ from kind of the national conversation about affordability and those other issues that we know that Democrats are going to run on? | ||
| Well, I think you have trade issues with Canada as well because of their proximity to the state and being a border state. | ||
| You have lobsterman issues. | ||
| You have kind of trade issues as well with Canada and with European countries. | ||
| And so I think that those tariffs are also a concern as well in Maine. | ||
| Okay, Jessica, before we continue, I want to invite our viewers to join in on the conversation. | ||
| We are talking all things Senate Rays 2026. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Join in on us when we're talking about the Senate. | ||
| Okay, I want to talk about North Carolina, another place where Chuck Schumer got one of his picks. | ||
| The current sitting senator, Republican Tom Tillis, who has criticized Trump repeatedly, more so now that he's announced that he is retiring. | ||
| Who is running for this race? | ||
| And does it running for this race change what happens in November? | ||
| This is a place where the candidates have virtually been decided now. | ||
| Michael Watley is the former RNC chairman. | ||
| He's the former North Carolina Republican Party chairman, but he's never run for office before. | ||
| Being an operative and being a candidate are two very different things. | ||
| He's also facing a lot of criticism because Trump named him, of course, Hurricane Helene hit in the fall of 2024 and really hit Western North Carolina. | ||
| He was sort of, he was named as the recovery czar there in Western North Carolina. | ||
| He's faced a lot of criticism for not acting quickly enough to deliver federal funds to that area that is still very much hurting. | ||
| And then you have former governor Roy Cooper. | ||
| He was just termed out. | ||
| He was elected twice on the same ballot as Trump. | ||
| I think this is really important to point out because most governors are elected in a midterm year. | ||
| But North Carolina elects their governors concurrently with presidential. | ||
| So he was elected in both 2020 and in 2016 and in 2020 when Trump won. | ||
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unidentified
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You can continue watching this event if you go to our website, c-span.org. | |
| We're going to leave it now for live coverage of the U.S. House here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Prayer will be offered by Chaplain Kibben. | ||
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unidentified
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Would you pray with me? | |