Jacob Rubashkin breaks down the 2026 midterms, where Democrats need 4 Senate seats and 3 House seats to secure majorities, citing 15 retiring Republicans vs. 18 retiring Democrats. Texas primaries—like John Cornyn’s re-election and Jasmine Crockett vs. James Tallarico—highlight ideological battles, while North Carolina’s Roy Cooper vs. Michael Watley (Trump-backed) could flip a Senate seat last won by Democrats in 2008. Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur defies redistricting in a TILT Republican district, and Sherrod Brown aims to rebound with a 5-point generic ballot lead, targeting voter dissatisfaction over affordability. Maryland’s contentious redistricting risks blocking Democratic gains despite favorable maps, while Trump’s Epstein fallout and low approval ratings reshape party dynamics, making House flips more plausible than Senate waves. [Automatically generated summary]
He came in third place during the primary behind Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale.
He ran a second campaign for president four years later, but lost that nomination to Michael Dukakis.
Continuing his political service, Jesse Jackson served as a shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997.
His primary role in the unpaid position was to lobby for D.C. statehood.
Throughout his career, Reverend Jackson established several advocacy organizations, which later merged into the current Rainbow Push Coalition, which champions for social justice, voting rights, and economic equality.
In 2000, Reverend Jackson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.
Just last year, he was diagnosed with progressive supernuclear palsy, a rare brain disease that affects body movements with conditions similar to Parkinson's disease.
Reverend Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and their five children.
All day on C-SPAN 2, we're showing programming from our archives of Jesse Jackson in his own words, speaking at conventions about his life and legacy and his presidential campaigns.
You can also find appearances and events with Jesse Jackson in our video library at c-span.org by searching his name.
With less than 260 days until Election Day and two weeks before the first primaries, we're taking some time to focus on the midterm elections.
Jacob Rubashkin is back with us, Deputy Editor of Inside Elections.
And Jacob Rubashkin, as usual, start with the math here.
As it stands today, how many seats would Democrats need to pick up in order to take the House and the Senate in election 2026?
Right.
So the Senate map is the most straightforward to tackle here.
The answer is four.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats in the Senate, get them to that 51 number.
Remember, if they only get three, it's a 50-50 deadlock and Vice President JD Vance can cast tiebreaking votes for Republicans.
So Democrats need four in the Senate.
In the House, it's a little bit more complicated because there are some vacancies, but big picture math, Democrats need a net gain of three seats to get to that 218 number, reclaim the narrowest possible majority.
And so your assessment, the scenario for reclaiming the House more likely than the Senate?
Absolutely.
At this point, what we know based on the current House map, historical trends, and the political environment, Democrats are in a much better position in the House relative to where they are in the Senate.
Of course, the Senate only elects a third of its members every two years.
And it just so happens for Democrats that the class of senators up for re-election this year is not the most favorable to them.
There aren't very many great pickup opportunities in the House.
There are plenty of places where Democrats can find those three seats that they need.
Define what a wave election is and when do we know if it's a wave election year?
Oh man, this is the million-dollar question.
It's hard to define a wave election.
You think back to 2018, which is a year that most of us would probably consider to be a wave election.
Democrats picked up 40 seats in the House.
They actually lost two seats in the Senate.
And I like to return to that year because I think it illustrates how even in a quote-unquote wave election, you can have somewhat unexpected or counterintuitive outcomes.
So certainly Democrats would like to take back the House if they take back the House with anywhere approaching that 40-seat mark they set in 2018.
Could you call that a wave election?
Sure, but I think the only way we really get to a true Democratic wave is if we also see them take back the Senate.
Roll Call Newspaper has something called a casualty list, and it's a list of members who are retiring or running for other office.
According to that list, this time, as of right now, 15 congressional Republicans are retiring, two have resigned, and 20 are running for other office.
That compares to 18 congressional Democrats retiring and eight running for other office.
Does that tell us anything?
It tells us that Congress is not the happiest place to be right now.
I think we're seeing that as a bipartisan sentiment.
Members of both parties are frustrated with how things are going in Washington, D.C., the breakdown of regular order, the consolidation of power into the Speaker's office, leaving people who once had committee positions that would have been very powerful in a much more diminished position.
So I don't think it's surprising at all that we're seeing members head for the exits, and especially that we're seeing members look for advancement either to the Senate in D.C. or, like Chip Roy, for instance, who's on the ballot in two weeks in Texas, looking for opportunities back in their home states to run in just to get them out of D.C., but to keep them in the political fray.
Take us to the primaries taking place in two weeks.
What are you watching for?
Well, voters are going to start voting very soon down in Texas and in North Carolina.
Those are our first primaries of the 2026 election cycle.
We've got some blockbuster races in the Lone Star State.
You've got that Senate contest, two big primaries, the Republican primary, Senator John Cornyn, fighting for his political life there, the Democratic primary between State Representative James Tallarico and Jasmine Crockett.
And that's just the beginning.
You've got House races across the board here.
Remember, Republicans redrew that Texas map to try and gain as many as five seats.
What does that mean?
It means a lot of primaries for newly safe Republican seats that are being fought out across ideological lines, across political lines, and many of them aren't going to be resolved in two weeks because Texas requires a majority for the primary to win the nomination.
And so a lot of these candidates are actually going to be stuck for another two months in a runoff.
That could include John Cornyn and whichever of his opponents holds him to less than 50% in the Senate primary.
And go to the Tar Heel State because there is a very closely watched Senate seat in North Carolina.
And that also, that primary taking place in two weeks.
Absolutely.
And there's a lot less suspense about the one in North Carolina, I would say, certainly on the Senate side.
Democrats coalesced very early around former Governor Roy Cooper, who is former state attorney general, one of the only Democrats who has consistently won statewide election in North Carolina, even as the state has remained so stubbornly Republican at the federal level.
He got in.
That was a big recruiting hit for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Republicans, meanwhile, have surrounded Michael Watley, the former Republican National Committee Chairman, as their presumptive nominee.
He still faces a few less heralded primary challengers, but he is likely to be their candidate in that race.
He was handpicked by Trump.
This is probably Democrats' best pickup opportunity on the Senate map.
It is absolutely a must-win for Democrats if they want to reclaim the Senate majority.
And look, that goes back to what I was saying earlier.
Democrats must win in the Senate.
Step one for reclaiming Senate majority is to win a state that they haven't won at the Senate level since 2008, 18 years ago.
So it's a challenge for Democrats and the Senate, but they've got candidates like former Governor Cooper who are putting them in contention as we head into the home stretch of this election season.
We're talking about this election season with Jacob Bashkin of Inside Elections.
Taking your phone calls, now would be a great time if you have questions about a certain race around the country, House or Senate.
Feel free to test his knowledge.
He's pretty darn good at it.
So taking your phone calls on phone lines for Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
You talked about the Tillis race as a must-win for Democrats if they want to take the Senate.
Where else can they look around the country if they're trying to get to that magic number four in the Senate?
Well, after North Carolina, we're headed up the East Coast all the way to Maine, where Senator Susan Collins just announced her reelection campaign.
Democrats have to beat her as well.
And this is no small feat if they're going to pull it off.
She has defied political gravity in this state in a way that essentially no other remaining senator in that chamber has been able to do.
She won re-election in 2020, even as Joe Biden was winning Maine at the top of the ticket.
She didn't just win a narrow race.
She won by eight points while Joe Biden was winning by nine points.
This is not something that any other senator has really been able to accomplish in the last couple of years.
So Democrats have their work cut out for them there.
They've got a primary between this sitting governor, Janet Mills, and kind of an upstart insurgent progressive candidate named Graham Plattner.
They've got to resolve that before they can turn their attention to Collins.
And they've got to beat her after years and years of trying and failing to do so.
And even if they do, again, that just gets them to two.
They still have another two seats they've got to pay.
So where else do they look?
Well, this is where recruitment really has come in clutch for Democrats because it has been a priority of Senate Minority Leader Schumer, who also leads the Democratic campaign operation, essentially.
He's the power behind the throne there.
He has worked very hard to try and coax candidates into races that are not as competitive on paper at least, but could be with the right person at the helm.
So we're looking at Ohio, which is a state that has trended toward Republicans significantly over the past decade, once the quintessential swing state, now very much a Republican state.
But former Senator Sherrod Brown, who lost his reelection campaign in 2024 by about four points, he's running again.
That gives Democrats an opportunity there at the very least.
In Alaska, another state where Democrats have really struggled at the federal level.
The one person that they found some success with, former Congresswoman Mary Peltola, she's running in that race.
So I would say Ohio and Alaska are probably your next two best bets.
And then, you know, we'll see what happens in Texas.
We'll see what happens with the primary in Iowa as well.
And there are a few other states that in a true wave scenario could come online.
If we're sitting here, John, in October talking about Mississippi or South Carolina, that's when we'll know we're in true Democratic wave territory.
From the Senate come back to the House, Inside Elections has its race ratings where it tries to categorize all the different House and Senate races to give you a sense of which ones are the most competitive.
The most competitive category is called the toss-up category, trying to figure out that it's a coin flip right now as to who would win it.
In that toss-up category, there's 10 races listed from Arizona to Virginia, but eight of them are Republican seats and only two are seats held by Democrats.
What does that tell us?
Well, it tells us that the overall political environment is more tilted toward Democrats right now.
When you look at all of the macro indicators that us in the business track here, it's clear that Democrats have a head of steam heading into the spring of 2026.
So you've got an unpopular Republican president in the White House.
Donald Trump has lost steam ever since he came back into office, essentially.
His approval ratings are the lowest that they've been, certainly of this term and approaching the lowest that they ever were in his first term either.
You have Democrats leading on the generic ballot when pollsters ask people who they would rather vote for in a congressional election.
You've got a whole slew of special elections over the last year and change that show that Democrats are more fired up to vote and they're able to compete in areas that are more traditionally Republican.
So when you layer all that on top of the House map as we know it to exist, there are just more opportunities for Democrats.
They're reaching deeper into Republican territory.
Republicans have a few offensive opportunities, but by and large, this is a defensive cycle for them.
For a race rating expert, I'm sure it's like picking a favorite child.
What is one or two of those toss-up races that most interests you?
Well, look, I'll give a shout-out to Michigan's 7th District.
I actually was in district a couple days ago interviewing some of the candidates there.
This is a central Michigan seat.
It's anchored by Lansing.
It's represented by a freshman Republican named Tom Barrett.
This is a really interesting seat.
Of course, it voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
It switched and voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
Tom Barrett was the Republican candidate in 2022.
He lost to Alyssa Slotkin.
2024, the district votes for Trump.
Barrett is the candidate again, and this time he wins.
So this is a district that can vote both ways.
It's very evenly politically divided.
Democrats have an interesting primary there.
Top two candidates, the former ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, and retired Navy SEAL, Matt Mazdom.
Both of them are raising a lot of money from Michigan and national donors.
This is a district that, if we're looking for one on election night that will tell us how things are going, I'm going to be looking toward Lansing on that front because it is so evenly divided and has moved so much with the national environment in each of its election cycles.
It'll be one to watch.
So that's the overall picture of some individual races, but now the fun part where people try to test you on races or simply ask about their favorite race.
Again, Jacob Rubashkin is the guy you want to do that to, a race ratings expert and has studied all these races and all the seats that are in play listed on Inside Elections website, inside elections.com.
Jacob Rubashkin and Nathan Gonzalez over there doing a great job.
It's Akiva up first in Clifton, New Jersey, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
Good morning, Jacob.
I only have three questions for you.
Actually, just two.
First question: Michigan has a Senate race because Gary Peters decided to retire.
And Mike Rogers, I heard, is likely going to win easily.
And Trump is very popular in Michigan.
He's building more support among union voters and auto workers than Nick Romney and John McCain did, certainly from my perspective.
Could that seat actually flip?
And could Mike Rogers win it?
And Akiva, did you have a second race you wanted to talk about, or that's the one you want to focus on?
Actually, one more.
Okay.
And that is New Hampshire.
New Hampshire Senate race is also an open seat.
Jean Shaheen's retiring.
The man she beat a long time ago, 18 years ago, she beat Senator Sununu, who was elected in the 2002 wave election.
And he's been out of office for quite long time.
Trump is quite popular in New Hampshire, I was told.
Could John Sununu, a Republican, win in New Hampshire in November?
Akiva, thanks for that.
The Wolverine State and the Granite State.
Yeah, well, it's a big day for Michigan here.
Look, I think this seat may be Democrats' most vulnerable look on the Senate map.
They've got two seats that are very clearly in that kind of top tier of vulnerability.
It's Michigan and Georgia.
But there are some things happening in Michigan that give cause for optimism for Republicans.
So as Akiva mentioned, you've got Mike Rogers, who is the former congressman and former Senate nominee.
Democrats Struggle With Trump's Impact00:07:44
Two years ago, he lost a narrow race to Alyssa Slotkin as Trump was winning at the top of the ticket.
He is going to be the Republican nominee there.
The Democrats, though, are still very much sorting out their picture after Senator Gary Peters declined to run for re-election.
You've got three major candidates there: Congresswoman Haley Stevens, State Senator Mallory McMorrow, and former Wayne County Health Director, and 2018 gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Syed.
This is a highly competitive primary.
All three of them are raising roughly equivalent amounts of money.
If you take a poll, they're all bunched up somewhat in the mid to high 20% in terms of vote share, and they aren't going to the polls until August.
This is a late primary in Michigan.
So a lot we don't know about that race and Republicans hoping that they can steal it with Mike Rogers.
So what is Mike Rogers' pitch?
to other Republicans if he can't win when he's on the ballot, when Trump's at the top of the ticket.
And we've talked before about Donald Trump being a magnet for Republican voters coming out.
What is his pitch that, but I can win this time when Trump's not on the ticket?
Well, it starts with money.
If you remember in the 2024 presidential election cycle, Republicans had a number of clear Senate targets that they were looking for to flip the chamber, and they were the lowest hanging of lowest hanging fruit.
We're talking about West Virginia and Montana and Ohio, places where Republicans knew that they could win.
And then there was a whole other tranche of Senate seats that they were competitive in, but were not priorities.
States like Wisconsin and Arizona and Nevada and Pennsylvania and Michigan.
And unfortunately for Mike Rogers, he was typically at the bottom of that list because he had been out of office for a while.
Michigan hasn't voted for a Republican senator in a very, very long time.
And his opponent, Congresswoman Alyssa Slotkin, was a fundraising machine and was running a very tight ship on her side of the aisle.
So Rogers was not able to raise the kind of money that we now expect from a top-tier Senate campaign in 2024.
And he wasn't able to receive the benefit of the outside spending that Republicans were directing toward those more competitive races.
And so his campaign's argument is that rather than being the sixth option on a Senate map for Republicans in 2024, he's now very clearly option number one.
And so he's going to see a lot of outside involvement.
He's got a clear primary for him this time.
Last cycle, he did have to dispatch a number of primary challengers before he was able to turn to the general election.
But you're absolutely right.
The main challenge for him is still going to be how do I motivate Trump voters to turn up to the polls and to vote for me?
Because if everyone who had voted for Donald Trump in 2024 had voted for Mike Rogers in Michigan, he would be a senator right now.
And so it's not an easy task.
Republicans don't have a clear shot at this race either.
And he's got a long way to go.
But the ingredients are there for him to break the streak in Michigan for Republicans.
In this job, how often do you find yourself saying it starts with money?
More and more every year.
I think it's become an increasingly critical part of any campaign, and especially when we're talking about outside money, super PACs, independent expenditures.
Those have become the dominant force in electoral politics over the last decade and a half.
The Granite State, Sununu, in New Hampshire.
Yeah, so Republicans are not without some of their own recruitment wins on this map.
This is a seat like Michigan that if the incumbent had chosen to run for reelection, we wouldn't be talking about.
Senator Shaheen won a dominant victory in 2020.
She's a former governor of New Hampshire.
She's very well liked up there.
And it's the fact of her retirement that is making this race competitive at all.
Now, Democrats have avoided a primary here.
Their likely nominee, Chris Pappas, very early on in the cycle, navigated somewhat of a sticky situation with his colleague, Maggie Goodlander.
There are only two congresspeople in the state of New Hampshire, and both of them wanted to run for this seat, but he was able to box her out.
Republicans, who they really wanted was not John E. Sununu, but Chris Sununu, the former governor, and the younger.
And he has turned down Senate run after Senate run after Senate run, much to the chagrin of Republicans here in D.C.
So they settled for John E. Sununu, who, of course, held this Senate seat decades ago.
He doesn't have a clear path to the nomination.
He still has to get past former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, but he's got a Trump endorsement, and that'll be helpful as he navigates that very, very late primary.
New Hampshire doesn't vote until September.
Chris Pappas already very much in general election mode.
And again, New Hampshire a state that, while it's always very close, it is a bit of a white whale for Republicans in recent years.
They just haven't been able to get across the finish line in the granite state.
Back to the Tar Hill state.
David in Concord, Democratic line, good morning.
Hey, good morning.
I'm just wondering what the Democratic Party is running on.
I mean, give me something besides hate Donald Trump.
I mean, if that's all you got, we don't need hate Donald Trump.
We need men and women who are wanting to make our nation good again.
We don't find this hate Donald Trump all the time.
Give me something that's worthwhile that will show me that we're growing as a nation to be better with teenagers, adults, seniors.
Show me that.
Don't tell me I hate Donald Trump all the time.
And the way that you have broken down districts in the nation, don't you think that there's a lot of voices that are not heard because of this?
David, thanks for the call from North Carolina.
The first question, the classic question to the party out of power, are you running against the party in power or are you running for some agenda?
And this is something that Democrats have struggled with ever since Donald Trump came onto the scene here.
And they're in a difficult position because Trump ultimately is the best motivator for voters of both parties.
He brings out Republicans, but he also brings out Democrats.
He fires people up in a way that we don't typically see from national political figures on both sides of the aisle.
And that puts Democrats in a tough spot because they're tempted to simply run in that anti-Trump lane and juice their own turnout.
But then they struggle with explaining to voters why they are the best alternative.
And we see this disconnect when we look at a Democratic Party's favorability ratings versus Trump's favorability ratings.
You would think Trump is so unpopular.
Why aren't voters absolutely flocking to Democrats?
And it's because Democrats are actually quite unpopular as well.
So I think part of the reason why, you know, David in North Carolina, the Democrats wanted Governor Roy Cooper to run is because this is somebody who has a track record at the state level.
He's got four terms as state attorney general that he's talking about in terms of the criminal justice angle.
And he's got two terms as governor that he can point to.
So finding a candidate who is both well-known and has accomplishments at the state level to talk through is pretty critical for Democrats as they've struggled to get a lot of their incumbent senators, guys like Sherrod Brown in Ohio last cycle or John Tester, even someone like Bob Casey, who have essentially have the stink of Washington on them after years and years of office back to reelection.
Republican Rank and File Shift00:04:00
And so I think that's why we've seen some of the navigation there with the former governor.
But to David's second question, I think absolutely there are two things going on here.
We've got a natural geographic sorting that has placed people in different parts of the country and in their individual states and even cities that are more ideologically homogenous, right?
People just want to live around people who think like them, who believe in the same things as them.
And there's been a natural ideological sorting over the last couple of decades that's been compounded by an artificial sorting, of course, through gerrymandering.
This is not something that's new.
been happening since our country was created 250 years ago, but it really did hit a fever pitch this past year with the advent of a pretty naked partisan operation to redraw congressional districts all across the country, first to benefit Republicans and then in retaliation to benefit Democrats in Democratic states.
We head to where the George Washington Bridge comes into the Garden State, Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Howard, Independent, good morning.
Yes, good morning.
I have a question regarding the Epstein matter.
To what extent will the administration's dawdling behavior affect the voting process eight and a half months from now?
I think I'd like to hear your guest review on the effect that this dawdling behavior the administration has with the Epstein matter and how it will interfere or affect the voter turnout and who voters will vote for in November.
Thank you.
Jacob Rubashkin.
Yeah, look, this is an issue where we have seen a rare break in terms of Republican rank and file voters and how they look at Donald Trump.
If you look at the polling data that we have, Republicans are not particularly happy with how the president has handled the Epstein files.
They want more answers.
They want more transparency.
And it's rare to find an issue where Republicans are willing to break with the president on any front.
Certainly when you look at Congress, some of the president's strongest supporters, representatives like now former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have essentially been ostracized by the entire Republican Party because she was unwilling to accept administration answers on the Epstein files.
Now, I think that it's also notable, of course, that the fallout within the Republican House Conference has been largely contained to Greene and a few other members.
But I do think it's significant to note any instance in which Republicans feel comfortable criticizing or even gently pushing back against the current administration.
I think that the Epstein files are part of a larger story to be told about Trump entering lame duck status and Republicans surveilling the issue landscape and deciding what are the things that I can now afford to create some distance on between myself and the president in order to spare myself some of the wrath of the voters that I feel is coming down the pike in November.
So, you know, I think the Epstein files are particularly pernicious, of course, because it's such a tragedy.
It's such a visceral and, you know, deeply horrifying, ultimately, situation that we continue to learn more and more about.
I don't think that anyone in the administration is helped by the drip, drip, drip of files that have been released and the constant back and forth.
This is something that Congress is not going to let go.
And if Democrats take back either chamber next year, we're going to be hearing a lot more about it.
But it's one of several things that I think are beginning to show some cracks in the Trump facade as he navigates what is the most perilous point in his presidency in at least five years.
Florida's Political Shift00:13:39
About 10 minutes left with Jacob Rubashkin.
Get your calls in about campaign 2026 and the midterm elections.
Sergio is in Florida.
Independent, you're up next.
Yes, sir.
Yes, good morning, John.
How are you, sir?
Doing well.
What's your question or comment?
Yes, good morning, Jacob.
How are you, sir?
Doing all right.
Okay, sir.
A couple of things that's nagged at me, okay?
For example, For Florida, basically.
I'm looking for David Jolly to win it because he has a strong presence about him to restore Florida.
And basically, I like your point of view on that.
And also, I like to see Donald Trump removed from presidency from being our president and somebody like Kamala Harris, who has high character to restore this country and so forth.
And Democrats are taking, especially in Florida, we call it those midterm elections and whatnot.
And I'd like to see more, more Democrats tick in the House and Senate next year.
What do you guys think?
Got the question.
Look, Florida, you know, we talk about Ohio going from quintessential swing state status to Republican state.
Florida has done that, but they've speedrun the process.
They've gone from swing state to not just Republican-leaning state, but pretty solidly Republican state in just a matter of years.
This is a state that went from voting for Barack Obama twice to voting for Trump narrowly twice by about a point or two in 2016 and 2020 to voting for Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio in 2022 by close to 20 points and Trump by 15 points in 2024.
So Democrats have lost a tremendous amount of ground in a very short time.
There is not a ton of optimism within the party right now about reclaiming either that gubernatorial seat, which is open because of Ron DeSantis being term limited.
Former Republican Congressman David Jolly, of course, is running in that race as a Democrat, but he's got a primary.
He's got to face Jerry Demings, the Orlando mayor, and husband of former Congresswoman Val Demings, who, of course, ran for Senate in 2022.
And he faces an uphill battle in Florida against whoever the Republican nominee is likely, though, to be Congressman Byron Donalds.
In the Senate race, you know, this is a seat that we do not hear very much about here in D.C. Appointed Senator Ashley Moody, who took over from Marco Rubio after he became Secretary of State.
She's running for a full term in her own right.
Democrats don't have a clear nominee yet.
There's some optimism, perhaps, that Alexander Vindman, who is, of course, one of that two whistleblowers who were at the center of the first Trump impeachment, he's running for that race.
Can he raise the kind of money that someone needs to be competitive in Florida?
Again, it's an open question.
His brother, Eugene, is a member of Congress from Virginia and one of the best fundraisers in the Democratic Party.
If Alexander can replicate some of that success and raise, you know, whatever it takes, and whatever it takes, folks, is $80 to $100 million these days in a state like Florida, then we can talk about that race.
But with other offensive opportunities for Democrats on the map that are far more enticing, whoever the Democratic nominee is in Florida is not going to get much, if any, help from the outside.
They will have to do it all on their own.
I would just note that Alexander Vindman was on C-SPAN's book TV.
He appeared at the Miami Book Fair in November and sat down with C-SPAN's Peter Slan to talk about his book, The Folly of Realism, a book on foreign policy and defense policy in Europe when it comes to Ukraine and Russia.
If you want to watch that, available at c-span.org.
Back to your phone calls.
This is Sean in The Old Dominion.
Republican, good morning.
Hey, good morning.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
I'm interested in your perspective on the race in Ohio, District 9.
As I understand it, it's a district that Trump won fairly handily and yet has a longstanding Democrat who's been for many years.
I think there's some interesting candidates on the Republican side and would like your thoughts.
Ohio District 9, which one's that one?
This is Marcy Kaptur.
So Ohio 9 is, like Sean said, this is a seat that on paper should be a pretty straightforward win for Republicans.
It's in Ohio's northwestern corner, anchored by Toledo.
But Democrat Marcy Kaptur has held on to this seat for decades.
She's the longest serving woman in the history of the House of Representatives.
And she has held on to this seat as it's been twisted and contorted.
Didn't she eventually have to run against another Democratic member of Congress?
She had to run against Dennis Kucinich, who, if you know your Ohio geography, represented Cleveland.
And Cleveland is over here, and Toledo's over here.
And they drew a district to try and get the two of them.
It was called the Snake on the Lake.
It was collected.
It was connected by the lake.
I don't even think that it had a land border between the two cities, but Marcy Kaptur won that.
She kicked Dennis Kucinich out of Congress.
And she held on even in 2022 when her seat was redrawn to be significantly more Republican.
She held on in 2024, a very, very close election there.
And now Republicans have redrawn her district yet again to add a few more points of Republican performance on top of what was already a Trump district.
But she is not done yet.
She is running for another term.
And Republicans are the ones who are sorting through a fairly uncertain primary.
They've got three major candidates there that are vying for the nomination.
You've got State Representative Josh Williams, who's got a very inspiring life story, a former defense attorney who has really kind of lived the American dream, pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.
You've got a retired Air Force officer named Aliyah Nadim, who also has an incredible story, kidnapped by her father and taken to Iraq as a child, rescued in a very daring operation by American authorities several years later, came back to America to serve in the military and is now running in that district.
And you've got Derek Maron, who is a state house leader who ran for this seat in 2024 and lost narrowly to Marcy Kaptur in that general election.
And it's not clear who is going to be the nominee there.
And whoever emerges from that primary will have a very good shot at becoming a member of Congress, just because this is a district that voted for Trump by about nine points in the 2024 election.
But Marcy Kaptur has defied political gravity before.
She's pulled out tough races, and she's not going down without a fight in 26 either.
So Ohio 9 is currently listed by Inside Elections as a TILT Republican seat.
But should there be an asterisk there because it says Marcy Kaptur is named by the seat?
Exactly.
Yeah.
I think that that rating is a reflection, of course, of the underlying politics of the district and the fact that it got a little bit worse for her in redistricting.
But we should never count her out, and that's why we have it rated there.
Time for a few more questions from recalls with Jacob Herbashkin.
This is why we have him on, to answer your questions and test him with races around the country.
This is Sean in Tennessee.
Democrat, good morning.
Hi, good morning to you guys both.
I'm calling in question about the race in Ohio, particularly the senatorial race.
I do believe that Sherrod Brown has a great possibility in winning that race only because I believe that Democrats are going to not run just on the Epstein files, but run on affordability.
Run on the fact that Trump stated that he was going to bring prices down on day one and things have gotten way more expensive than it was when he was running for president.
So what are your thoughts on that?
So this is a big opportunity for Democrats, but it's one that carries some risk.
Of course, Sherrod Brown represented Ohio in the Senate for many years, but he lost re-election in 2024, not by a wide margin necessarily, but also not by a nail biter either, about four points.
And so similar to what we were discussing with Mike Rogers, I think it's an open question.
What can you do differently so that you don't lose the way that you did two years ago?
And like Sean said, I think Democrats are eager to talk about affordability issues.
They feel that this is an issue space that has gotten a lot better for them since Trump came into office.
Voters are still very unhappy with the price of goods.
Trump's rating on the economy on cost of living is far worse than his rating overall, which suggests that there's opportunity for Democrats to move in on that kind of question.
And there's some feeling for Democrats that that will be some sort of karmic restoration after Joe Biden was bludgeoned over the head by an affordability crisis in the last two years of his presidency.
So is it sort of like the mirror question to the Mike Rogers question in Michigan?
If you're Sherrod Brown, you're saying, yes, I lost in 2024, but that was more about national politics and Donald Trump being on the ballot and Joe Biden to Kamala Harris on the ballot.
Now, if I can just stand on my own in the midterm election, I'm much more likely to win.
Is that the argument that he's making?
Look, I think that unlike Mike Rogers, the card that Sherrod Brown has to play is that the political environment is going to be better.
So exactly what you were saying, John.
Sherrod told people ahead of that 2024 race, he said, if Harris can keep the state within seven points, I can win.
And ultimately, Harris lost by about 11 points, and he lost by four.
So he had that number right down on the money.
And I think it's a fair argument to make whether it will play out or not, but it's a fair argument to make that the environment will be at least four points better for Democrats in 2026 than it was in 2024.
Trump won the popular vote by about a point and a half.
Democrats currently lead in the generic ballot by about five points already.
We're looking at perhaps a six and a half point gap.
That would be enough just on a back of the envelope math to get Brown over the finish line.
Of course, it's never that easy, and there are all sorts of specificities that go along with each of these races, but that's the case that Sherrod Brown has to make.
He's going to have the resources he needs.
He's going to have the outside help he needs.
And he's going to have the arguments that he wants to make against John Hughes said, the incumbent there, also an appointee, that he wasn't able to make against Bernie Marino when Sherrod Brown was the incumbent and Marino was the outside challenger.
Last call, Naomi is in Maryland.
Oxen Hill, Independent, good morning.
Good morning, John.
You're my absolute favorite host, and I just want to commend you on the Jesse Jackson segment.
It was excellent.
Great to see you.
Thanks for that.
I always try to watch when you're on.
What's your question for Jacob Rubaskin?
We're a little short on time.
Oh, sure.
So I wanted to ask about the Maryland redistricting plan.
What are the odds in that passing, or what are your thoughts around that?
Thanks for the call.
Yeah, well, I love talking about Maryland.
Maryland's my home state, and it is fun that we get to talk about what is typically a solidly democratic state at a national political level.
This redistricting process in Maryland has gotten quite ugly.
It's very contentious between Governor Wes Moore, who is pushing for a new map, and the state Senate President Bill Ferguson.
The reality is, Ferguson says that he has the votes to block redistricting.
And as state Senate president, he has the power to essentially prevent it from coming to a vote at all.
And if both of those things are true, it will not happen.
And no amount of frustration and commissions and blue-ribbon committees that the government will empanel to, the governor will impanel to try and push forward a new map will change the fact that if the votes aren't there in the legislature, it's not going to happen.
We saw this play out on the other side of the aisle in Indiana.
Trump put all of his pressure, the full weight of his political operation on the Indiana State Senate, and they did not budge.
In fact, more Republicans ultimately voted against redistricting in Indiana than for it.
And if it plays out similarly in Maryland, unfortunately for Democrats, there's nothing that the Governor Wes Moore or House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries can do to force them to redraw a 7-1 map into a 8-0 map that would help them pick up a seat.
Today marks Jacob Rubashkin's 20th appearance on the Washington Journal since first coming on in 2020.
And I'm sure we'll have you back on for playing more this cycle and in cycles to come.
Pressure On State Senates00:01:10
Always appreciate it.
Of course, it was a pleasure.
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