Advertisement

transcript

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.

No, I was recording the audio version of my fantasy novel, Michelle Cottle.

This is —

OK, I think —

— this is magic.

— we should have a bonus episode about Ross’s fantasy novel.

No.

Yes.

We can do a bonus — I will — I will, in all seriousness, happily do a bonus episode about the fantasy novel.

Oh, happily. Of course, you will. You’re selling books. [LAUGHS] [MUSIC PLAYING]

From “New York Times Opinion,” I’m Carlos Lozada.

I’m Michelle Cottle.

And I’m Ross Douthat.

And this is “Matter of Opinion,” where thoughts are allowed and a clear.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So I learned something this week when I was reading the papers and watching the news, and that is that it turns out there are a lot of other elections happening in early November besides Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Were you guys aware?

I had heard something.

Kazakhstan has parliamentary elections, is that —

Oh, yeah.

— what we’re talking about?

What’s your over under there?

The Cambodian state legislatures? Yes. Right?

I’m not amused by your pretend ignorance.

Pretend?

This is important.

So if you look back on our prior conversations, as I often do — this is what I do. I just listen to past “Matters of Opinion.” Is it “Matters of Opinion” or “Matter of Opinions?”

It’s “Matters of Opinion,” clearly.

We have spent so much time talking about the presidential contest, about Trump and Harris and Vance and Walz, but, of course, the success of the next president will depend in significant part on who controls the House and the Senate. So with just a few days left before this election on November 5, I want your help.

I want us to zoom in on what’s happening in a few key House and Senate races and also the races that we may be focused on ourselves as voters. And I hope we can work our way to thinking about how that future Congress, whatever it looks like, can shape the agenda and the power of the next president.

So before we dive into specific races, let’s just paint a quick picture of what’s at stake broadly in the Congressional elections. So someone give me that 30,000-foot view here.

OK, well, if you want to really make yourself panic, if you’re not up for a Trump presidency, think about a Trump presidency where, as is often the case — almost always the case in modern politics — his party controls both chambers of Congress and has an unimpeded MAGA runway to just do whatever he wants. So just dig into that and ponder it for a minute, because it won’t take much —

This doesn’t feel like a neutral — I think Carlos was asking for a neutral description, like how many Senate seats are up —

Maybe that’s not possible. That’s not possible these days.

— and you’re going straight to dark MAGA apocalypse.

I mean, we can talk about the numbers.

Elon Musk is actually going to be elected to the Senate from six separate states. They’ve changed the rules, just so you’re prepared.

He’s put enough money in.

There’s going to be a Robovan in every pot.

All right, all right, all right. The one thing I know is that the entire House is up because it always is.

It always is, yeah.

And about a third of the Senate.

The House is up and the Democrats need four seats to flip the House back to their control. And obviously, the Senate is tighter than a hippo in Spanx. It is a bloody battle.

The Republicans —

Is that a thing or is that a codolism?

I like to be visual. I like people to visualize how scary this is.

All right, a hippo in Spanx.

So the Republicans are favored to take the Senate because of who’s on the map and who’s retiring. And so the big backstop to this would be if Democrats won back the House, and then you would have at least one chamber. I like divided government a lot of the time. People talk about how much they hate not being able to get stuff through. I tend to think with the nation this divided, divided government is not a bad thing because it slows one party’s agenda down. I know that is not a popular sentiment, but there you have it.

So anyway, we’re talking about Democrats needing to grab four seats to take back the House or Republicans having to hold on by the skin of their teeth. And then the Republicans are favored to take back a basically evenly divided Senate.

Right. With the key races, for those purposes, being Montana, where right now it looks like Jon Tester, who has survived many past Senate campaigns, the populist Democrat farmer senator, he seems like he’s in trouble. Ohio Democrats have been hoping that Sherrod Brown would hang on.

There’s a toss-up in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona.

Yeah, the Midwestern states are where if the Republicans have a really good night, it will be because they were unexpectedly competitive in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I think everyone pretty much assumes that Kari Lake is going down to defeat in Arizona. That seems like less of a state to watch right now, though, of course, you never know. And finally, the Democrats have the great dream of unseating Ted Cruz in Texas.

Which is where I am this week.

All right.

I did some early voting with Ted. We did. We hit the community center. It was magic. I’m not going to lie.

So basically, it looks like it’s a coin toss. Coin toss is the metaphor of choice for a close election — maybe there’s some other one — but it’s a coin toss in the House. And then the Republicans look perhaps more favorable in the Senate. Especially with Joe Manchin leaving, it’s assumed West Virginia is a state that will go their way.

I’m not even sure Democrats are really contesting.

Yeah, no. And so really, they just need to flip one Senate seat, or it can be split and Vice President JD Vance can split all the differences.

Exactly.

Right. The reasonable thing to assume is that Republicans will have a razor-thin Senate majority when the night’s voting is over.

Yeah, it could be more than razor-thin.

If the night goes well for them, they could wind up with more than that.

Yes.

Before I was in Texas, I was in Montana with Tester’s folks. And it is a anxiety-inducing scene if you’re a Democrat.

So, Michelle, let’s go in that direction. I don’t mean anxiety. I mean follow you in your travels.

[LAUGHS]:

Because Michelle has been doing real reporting.

Yeah, she is the one intrepid reporter here —

She’s been on the trail.

— on “Matter of Opinion.” So tell us, from where have you been filing expense reports?

Well, I did enjoy Bozeman. I had not been to Montana. And it is as advertised. Yellowstone ready. Fabulous.

Bozeman is like — it’s like a colony of Los Angeles, though, at this point.

Ross —

It’s kind of —

— I was in Missoula. I was in Great Falls.

OK. All right, that’s legitimate.

Oh, that’s not —

Bozeman is absolutely —

Bozeman’s not real Montana?

No, 100 —

Ross, is that — I’m getting a Sarah Palin vibe here.

100 — we drove — no, look, I know all about Montana because I drove through it in a minivan with my then four children.

I know about it because I drove through it.

Bozeman —

That’s great.

— is Boz Angeles. It’s like rich people from California.

Which is exactly what you wrote about, Michelle, when you were looking at this Tester/Sheehy race. So tell us a little bit about not just the stakes, which we understand — control of the Senate — but what are the issues that are coming to the fore in that race, one of which, of course, is who is a real Montanan?

That is kind of what Tester, in particular, has made the centerpiece of his campaign, because the state, especially in the pandemic years, got this huge influx of out-of-staters moving there and changing the culture because a lot of these folks were very wealthy West Coasters moving in. So it’s driven up costs, especially housing costs. And so you have this very interesting dynamic where what Republicans usually talk about is migrants coming in from poor foreign countries and changing the culture and dynamics and taking jobs and resources.

You have something similar as a political theme in Montana, except it’s the Democrat doing it. It’s Jon Tester doing it. And his bogeyman is rich out-of-staters, which happen to include his Republican opponent, Tim Sheehy, who moved in a decade ago and started a couple businesses. But what you have is Tester has long defied the political trends and survived as a Democrat in a very red state, because Montana went for Trump by 16 points.

So this would be his fourth term, right, Tester?

This would be his fourth term. The way he’s done this is by pitching himself as Mr. Montana. He keeps a very, very big distance between himself and the national leadership of the Democratic Party. And he basically talks about he’s a third generation dirt farmer whose family’s been there for a jillion years. And he does ads on tractors and four-wheelers, which used to play really well in the state.

But as the politics have gotten nationalized, even in Senate and House races, you tend to see more partisan tribalism. And with all of these newcomers coming into the state, there’s some question about whether or not you’ve been there for 60 years or 100 years matters as much because a huge number of Montanans now are transplants.

And so you take all that and you mix it up, and it looks like Tester — the bill has come due. The demographics aren’t the same. The political scene isn’t the same. And he is the most vulnerable Senate member by far that everybody is looking at. And so much national money has gone into this race trying to tie him to the very progressive wing of his party. They’re talking a lot about trans rights, which is not a huge local drama in Montana, except that it’s playing into the national party messages.

Yeah, it’s interesting, Michelle, right, the way that Tester has sustained himself as a Democrat with a fairly liberal voting record — not the most liberal, but he hasn’t been a Joe Manchin figure.

Yeah, he’s not Joe Manchin.

He’s been much more affect persona tiller of the Earth kind of shtick. He’s missing fingers, right?

Three.

Yeah.

Three fingers —

Right. Yeah, yeah.

— from a lunch meat accident.

But so he’s sold himself basically as the non-rich version of Kevin Costner in “Yellowstone,” our favorite show about Montana.

Has he sold himself as that or is he that?

He’s the non-rich, non-hot version. Does that count?

I think, by the — whoa, hey, let’s not — I think by the time you’ve been a US Senator for three terms, you’re no longer just a poor dirt farmer, no matter what you say. But I don’t want to be cynical.

You’re so cynical.

Yeah, I mean, fine, he’s — it’s an interesting dynamic to be the liberal Democrat presenting yourself as the scourge of outsiders coming to take over Montana, because it’s quite true that there’s a lot of Republican money that has fled California for Idaho and Montana over the last 10 or 15 years. And the transformation of those states is itself just a fascinating story in American life, accelerated, clearly, by the pandemic, COVID and people migrating. Yeah, but yes, I, as someone who hasn’t reported there, I agree that I think Tester is going to lose this time.

So Michelle, Montana is one of several states with an abortion measure on the ballot as well this November. And you wrote about that when you were writing about this particular race. But you were saying that somehow the discussion of abortion rights politically was playing in this nonpartisan way. That was intriguing to me. How does — tell us about that.

So I’ve been looking at ballot measures since Kansas did the first one after Roe v. Wade was falling. One of the things that the people who organized these ballot measures stress to you is that you have to be very careful in red states not to pitch this as a partisan issue.

So as much as the Democratic Party and its candidates really want these ballot measures to drive pro-choice voters to the polls, who are going to then maybe be the folks who are going to vote for Democratic candidates, it doesn’t always work that way, especially in red states. The organizers do not mention party when they go door to door.

So if you were canvassing for this measure in Montana, you do no not then go, Jon Tester is a pro-choice candidate, because in order to pass these things have to have non-Democratic voters. So they did this in Kansas. They’ve done similar things in other states that are redder than average.

And so Tester is very much attaching himself to the abortion issue. But in order to get it on the ballot, they had to collect all these signatures. And it was like a historic number of people signed this measure to get it before voters. In order for that to have happened, it had to have been more than Democrats signing those petitions.

So even if the abortion measure wins in Montana, Tester is still expected to go down. On the other hand, if he does somehow pull it out, people on the Democratic side are like, it will be, in part, because of this measure driving more Democrats to the polls.

Yeah, I mean, I’ve wondered throughout the referendum process, just how much does this actually help Democrats win elections.

Only on the margins is what they say.

And fundraising, probably.

Oh, yes.

But if you’re Tester, Montana is a right-leaning state, but it’s one of the most libertarian right-leaning states. A perfect place, I would assume, as Republican-leaning states go, to run a pro-choice ballot measure. But precisely because of that, it’s harder for Tester to say, here, vote for me because you need me in Washington to make sure that abortion stays legal in Montana, if Montana’s voters are being told, guess what, all you have to do to keep abortion legal in Montana is vote in this ballot initiative. It seems totally plausible that that’s a difficulty for Democrats, right?

Yeah.

That they’re trying to make a national case. But meanwhile, if they’re winning the state ballot measures, the urgency of that national case for pro-choice voters is just going to feel a lot weaker.

And for people for whom this is the primary issue, they’re not willing to risk having the measure fail on the off chance that they could help Tester. So I talked to this fantastic 70-year-old lifelong conservative Republican who is so ticked off about her party’s position on abortion that she is like a super volunteer for this ballot measure. She is out there ringing doorbells, gathering signatures, but she will not even talk about party. She refuses to even say who she’s voting for this year because she just wants it to be so outside the realm of party fights.

So let’s temporarily leave Big Sky country. Ross, is there a particular race anywhere in the country that you are just fixated on?

I do think that one of the most interesting ones is the race we haven’t mentioned yet, which is the Nebraska Senate race —

Oh, yes.

— where in lieu of having a competitive Democrat, there is an independent candidate, Dan Osborn, who is in certain ways like Tester, but more so, an extremely blue collar populist figure, but also running a slightly more, I would say, Manchin-line campaign in terms of presenting himself as a real moderate on the issues, not someone who’s just going to be a down the line vote for liberal priorities.

And he’s running a surprisingly competitive campaign against the Republican incumbent Senator Deb Fischer, who is a sort of undistinguished, not particularly notable Republican Senator in a reliably Republican state. I don’t think Osborn is likely to win. I think what often happens with these kind of candidates is they fly under the radar for a while, nobody notices them, nobody attacks them very much. They get surprisingly strong polling results, and then they get associated with national politics and they fall short.

That’s my expectation here. But it is a very interesting model for essentially what you could call not even Democrats — non-Republicans in red states.

And the independent has said he wouldn’t caucus with either party, which is very unusual.

Yes, that’s —

That does not happen. I don’t think that would hold. But it’s a fascinating promise.

Well, I think it would have to hold if he won and wanted to win re-election. I think if you had a guy who won as an independent in Nebraska and started caucusing with the Democrats, he might as well just throw his re-election away.

I mean, it is hard to not caucus with those parties. You don’t get any perks.

Well, right. Well, that’s the trade-off. But I mean, the reality is, in those states, the national Democratic brand is so bad, so toxic, but there are also still voters who don’t like the Republican Party and are open to an alternative. And this is where people had kicked around the idea of Joe Manchin plus Mitt Romney, third party just for the Senate alliance. Obviously, nothing came of that.

But it’s an interesting model, to try and run as a genuine independent, not just as a Democrat-lite. And it has parallels to the efforts of moderate Republicans to win in deep blue states, like your home state of Maryland, Carlos, where an interesting question — Larry Hogan, right? The incredibly popular Republican governor of Maryland is running.

Yeah.

Have you been watching this, Carlos a ton? Because I did some reporting with both those candidates, and I want to hear your take.

Yeah, I mean, so I live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. And this Senate race, I think, speaks to a similar idea that you encountered in Montana, Michelle, about the national overpowering the local. So we have former two-term Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, running against Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat. She’s the County Executive here and former state’s attorney in Prince George’s County.

Hogan was a very popular two-term governor here. People in Maryland liked that he was this independent-minded Republican who would speak out against Trump when he felt it was necessary. A nice bit of trivia, of course, is that his........

© The New York Times