With Pennsylvania’s special election in the rear view, this panel turns its attention to the mid-term congressional elections and what’s in store. Join LibertyNaiton.com’s Leesa K. Donner, Mark Angelides, Sarah Cowgill, and Graham J. Noble for this political roundtable.
Transcript
Leesa:
Welcome to LibertyNation.com’s weekly political roundtable. Joining me for today’s discussion about the Democratic strategy and its failings in the run-up to the midterm elections are; Mark Angelides, our managing editor from across the pond, Sarah Kyle Gill, our national correspondent, and Graham Noble, our political correspondent. I’m Lisa K Donner.
This is going to be a big year one way or the other for the midterm elections. Graham, you have been writing a weekly column on Liberty Nation, and crunching the numbers and probabilities for the midterm results. As a matter of fact, your articles are quite popular. What do you predict from what you observed so far will be the overall campaign strategy going forward for the Democrats?
Graham:
Well, Leesa, I think that as usual with the Democrats I think their platform for the midterms is going to be based on what they think is the flavor of the day, the emotional nature stuff. So, once again, rather than going for some hard-headed, rational, long-term economic strategy that’s going to make everything better, they’re going to run on their normal identity politics. Particularly they’re going to be talking a lot about gun control, you know they’re going to be talking about the hot buttons of the time that I think maybe is going to, you know, win them some seats.
Leesa:
Sarah, while many commentators are predicting a blue wave, what problems do you see the Democrats are going to face?
Sarah:
They don’t have a message.
Priorities USA, the major super PAC that funded Hillary’s campaign and goes back quite a way, released a memo not too long ago, maybe two or three weeks ago. They basically warned them to stay away from immigration talk, and in tax reform talk to focus strictly on health care, because basically on that issue.
Leesa:
Mark, in reality, we know that much of the leftist media is going to be shilling for the Democrats. They did this in the 2016 election they’ve done it for just about every special election since. How much is this actually going to impact voters in their final decision in your opinion?
Mark:
Quite honestly not in the slightest.
What will impact voters decisions now is social media, but probably not in the way that most people think.
I mean if we look at the Russian collusion that’s apparently been taking place, which resulted in thirteen warrants for the arrest of Russian nationals, the actual impact they had was absolutely minimal.
I mean this is said by pretty much everybody in positions of authority. They’re saying the impact was utterly minimal.
In fact, if we look across the pond on this, we’ve got Mark Zuckerberg who is being subpoenaed to come to Parliament and speak about how Russia influenced the Brexit vote. Although we already have the numbers on this and it’s quite insane.
For the entire anti-Brexit movement, which was the British establishment, and then you’ve got the entire Brexit movement, which if you believe the people who lost the referendum, was the Russians, they managed to spend a grand total of 73 pence. Now in American money that’s also still not a lot.
So what’s gonna happen, and the same thing in America here, there’ll be a lot of light but almost no heat. There’ll be people pushing out campaigns across social media which they think will be more effective.
Leesa, you did an amazing interview with Donna Brazile who talked about how crunching the numbers and getting the social marketing numbers together made a huge difference for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
People have actually moved beyond that now. They get their information from so many different sources. I mean to say that there’s such a thing is the alternative media now is not even true, Alternative media is the media. The alternative media, the ones who are still sticking with the original plot and the party lines and we’re putting out all this new information that is such a wave against the traditional leftist domination that usually takes place.
So, sorry, long way around to answer your question, the media will affect voting intentions, not in the slightest. Social media will have slightly more an effect, but there are so many people railing against the lies and the propaganda now, that I would imagine pretty much zero is the sum total.
Leesa:
Sarah I’d like to go to you next.
You know if you look at the 18th district in Pennsylvania where Lamb just supposedly won over Ciccone, what you had was a candidate that was really running as a pro-Trump Democrat. Now that seem to be a fairly winning strategy for Democrats, do you see more of that coming around?
Sarah:
I do. Trump has never been with one strong party or the other. He just ended up running as a Republican and blowing up the Republican Party which Republicans obviously wanted. He appeals to a broader audience in that he’s a negotiator. I mean he you can see it on his gun control issues. You can see him bending back and forth.
You know whether you like him personally he does want to work with both sides of the aisle. He’s childish in how he does it at times but still, that’s that’s very prevalent, and I think we’re gonna see a lot more localized you know takeovers from the Democrats there. I don’t think they’re gonna get national this year at all. I think they’re gonna start and go small.
You know you’re gonna have the cities in the States, and that’s where they’re gonna try to overtake us.
Leesa:
Yes and that really echoes what Donna Brazile told us months ago. Now going around the table starting with Graham. What do we all think is the likelihood of the Republicans losing control of either house and if they do, who is ultimately to blame? Graham?
Graham:
Well, I think there’s almost no chance of the Democrats gaining control of the Senate. That’s just too big a hill to climb for them. They’ve got way more incumbents running than the Republicans, yeah not to mention the fact that the 10 of the 20 odd Democratic senators that are running for re-election are running in states that Trump won. The Republicans really just have to hold on. They’ve got just a small handful of senators running for re-election. You know the Senate is a bridge too far for the Democrats.
In terms of the house, I really find it hard to believe that this so-called wave is going to materialize. Although, I tend to agree with Sarah somewhat in terms of the Democrats trying a more local strategy than a national strategy.
James Carville famously said many years ago, “It’s the economy stupid.” and you know that’s gonna be a tough one. I think the improving economy is going to is gonna be the rock upon which that blue wave breaks.
I can see maybe the Democrats picking up a net gain of seats in the House of Representatives, but I’m not entirely sure at all that they’re going to gain control of the house.
Mark:
I think that that they might. Obviously, with Graham, I agree completely that the Senate’s is not going to happen for them.
The House of Representatives, there’s a chance, but they might just screw it up first.
I don’t know if you’ve been watching what’s happening in California in some of the districts, but they’ve they fielded that too many candidates. Because it’s the first two who get to run regardless of party, what’s happening is they’ve got eight candidates all vying for 45% of the vote. They might not even make it on some of the ballots. So although they will try and out Trump, Trump in some ways or go local as Sarah says, I think they may have screwed it already I don’t think there’s much chance for them.
Leesa:
All right, Sarah, have they screwed the pooch?
Sarah:
I think it’ll be a squeaker in the House. The Senate is a no-go.
It could be a squeaker in the House, but you know if we lose this after everything that has transpired in the last two years, we have ourselves to blame. We have our rhinos to blame for not getting enough there ‘you know whats’ for the last two years.
Leesa:
All right open forum who’s got something they just have to get off their chest about the midterms?
Mark:
It will be an utter disaster in terms of the nonsense that gets fed to us if the Democrats make any gains at all in these elections. It will just be, “This is the wave! This is what’s happening! The whole thing’s changing! Trump’s all finished!”.
It will be chaos, and it will just be so much noise coming from the media, desperate to cling on to any semblance of, “we’re still relevant.”
More so than for any other reason I’m hoping the Democrats get a severe drubbing in 2018.
Graham:
And I’m thinking as well that if anything like the Blue Wave were to actually materialize and Democrats did actually come away with huge gains in the House of Representatives, which again I find that hard to believe that’s going to happen, but if it does happen and if the Democrats come away with a with anything like a decent majority in the House, there is going to be a lot of finger-pointing and recrimination within the conservative / Republican movement.
On the right side of the aisle, there’s going to be a lot of circular firing squads going on. You know, obviously the so-called ‘never Trumpers’ are gonna be blaming Trump for the losses, and then those who support Trump (or at least those who don’t hate him) on the right are going to say (and I believe they will have a point) that it was the fault of that stubborn wing of the of the conservative movement, and the Republican movement, that absolutely refuses to give Trump credit for anything.
More so as even joined the left in trying to tear him down you know so yeah there’s gonna be fireworks if the Democrats do actually gain control of the house.
Leesa:
Well, part of me thinks that they’re gonna be smart enough to run more lambs. That is, the pro-Trump throwback, JFK, you know classic blue Democrat. But part of me thinks they’re gonna be really stupid and run the Bernie’s, and my crazy leftist and that sort of thing.
So thank you, Mark, Sarah, and Graham and thank you for joining us for LN TV roundtable discussion.
Be sure to visit LibertyNation.com for all the news and analysis minus the propaganda.
Don’t forget to download our new APP!
LN news and commentary for today’s roundtable. I’m Lisa k Donna, and you’ve been watching another edition of LN TV.
