The midterm elections are just a few days away, and Democrats aren’t exactly enthusiastic about their prospects. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The midterm elections are just a few days away and Democrats, well, they’re not exactly enthusiastic about their prospects. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins joins me to talk about this and many other topics. So, you know, if you read anything right now, it is just, it’s the same message. The Democrats are in trouble, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s that message that keeps coming through. If I’m looking at it, I think the Democrats take, I think the Republicans take the House, Democrats hold onto the Senate, may be wrong. What’s your take?
Farron Cousins: No, I agree with you. I think the House is a foregone conclusion. A couple weeks ago it really was looking like the Republicans would only have a couple seats advantage, you know, five, six is what the projections were. We’re looking at over 20 now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I’ve heard as high as 30.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Things have definitely shifted in the Republicans favor in the House. So I, I think that’s almost a giveaway. It’s the Senate really, where we’re starting to see a lot of these races tighten. I mean, the polls are changing every day and that’s what’s getting so frustrated about what I do every day, is you can’t talk about a poll, because by the time people watch that video, a whole new poll is out that shows the exact opposite. So we don’t know.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I mean, first of all, you believe the same thing I do about polling. I think it’s basically useless.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, all you can do is read tea leaves.
Farron Cousins: It’s voodoo at this point.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it’s voodoo. You look at some numbers and you say, well, here’s what it looks like. So I, you know, I’m, I’m hearing the Republicans already beating on their chest. We’re, you know, gonna take the Senate, gonna take the House. They might, but guess work, you know, we’ve been reading tea leaves a long time. I don’t think that’s the situation.
Farron Cousins: And I think once it comes down to it, the Republicans just have so many bad candidates out there. Herschel Walker and Dr. Oz, obviously at the top of that list, those are the two everybody’s focused on. And I don’t know how those two candidates overcome all of the negatives. Even in deep red Republican territory, you still have those Democrats, Warnock and Fetterman polling above them. Not by as much as they, they were two months ago, but they’re still ahead by enough where they might be able to have a pretty easy victory.
Mike Papantonio: Problem is independents.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Right now you have independents sitting out there, what is it, 18% of them still haven’t made.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a big number. They still haven’t made a, actually the number of, the number of them that haven’t made up their mind is higher than that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: But the independents are gonna drive this. And the, the only, here’s the, here’s the spoiler here. The independents are heavily buying into the idea that the economy sucks, which it does. That crime is outta control, which it is. You know, it’s all of the talking points. That the border is a problem. They’re buying, independents are buying into that. Independents in the past really have more favored Democrats than they have Republicans. That’s, that’s not what it looks like this time to me.
Farron Cousins: Right. The independents are the people who actually do go out there every day and they say, is my situation better today than it was two years ago?
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And almost every election, no matter who’s in charge, the answer to that question is, no.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: You’re not better off than you were two years ago. So they’re the ones who flip.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: They say, okay, well, in 2020 I did vote for the Democrats. I thought my situation would get better.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Things are not better. I’m looking at my bank account, I’m looking at my paychecks, they’re not better. And y’all can get mad all you want about hearing that, but that’s the way it is.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you know, that’s the problem with doing a show like this. People don’t, they just want to hear what they want to hear.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: In other words, when we do a segment saying, hey, you know, Democrats may be in trouble. You got these whinnies, the whinnies, my God text, you know, Pap’s a right winger, Farron has forsaken the Democrats. They really hate to hear the truth. And it’s amazing to me. I mean, you, you could tell ’em, you could say, this is not conjecture, this is the truth. But I don’t think it’s just our audience. I think it’s Democrats in general, Republicans in general, they don’t want to hear what they disagree with. But that’s not real journalism, is it?
Farron Cousins: No. They don’t want to hear the bad news. And the bad news is that reality is showing us right now Democrats are gonna lose the House. We’re not gonna pick up as many Senate seats as we had originally thought. I still think we hold and I think we gain a seat or two, but we could also lose a couple seats that we did hold. So it, it’s not good news for the Democrats. And then of course, looking more broadly out there, yes, Biden has done some good things that we have talked about.
Mike Papantonio: We talk about it all the time.
Farron Cousins: But it’s not enough to change these people’s financial situation in middle America. It’s like the Obama recovery. They came out and told us after he took office and did these things, the economy’s great. No, it wasn’t. Wall Street was great.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Corporations were doing great. Workers saw their pay decrease.
Mike Papantonio: 25 to 30% of Democrats are not enthusiastic about voting at all. Although the numbers are startling right now. This could be the biggest turnout we’ve seen in a long time.
Farron Cousins: It really could. So I think at this point, it really is, anything goes. Who knows?
Mike Papantonio: And God forbid we should say something that you don’t want to hear, but that’s what we do.
