ANNOUNCER: From the Nation’s Capital, the McLaughlin Group….an unrehearsed program presenting inside opinions and forecasts on major issues of the day….sponsored in part by Edison Electric Institute…the association of electric companies…and by Northrup Corporation…Northrup, making advanced technology work….
Here’s the moderator, John McLaughlin, Washington executive editor of the National Review.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Issue One – When donkeys fly?
MR. MCLAUGHLIN ON TAPE: Democrats are singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” after a run of good fortune has made the once-unthinkable now…thinkable!!!
Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco could retain the Speaker’s gavel after the midterms.
Item: A win last Tuesday by an ostentatiously pro-choice Democrat in a special election in the Empire State’s nineteenth congressional district has analysts in both parties wondering just how big the abortion issue could play in November.
Item: For the first time since the fall of 2021, polling averages suggest a narrow majority of voters prefer the Democrats over the Republicans to control Congress.
Item: The Wall Street Journal editorial board and a prominent New York Post columnist are ringing the alarm bells…..Republicans, they say, can no longer expect the vibrant rush of a Red tsunami to power them back into congressional control….thanks…in part….to …the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion rights.
And MEGA item: While the lefties at FiveThirtyEight say Democrats now have a 22 percent chance of keeping House control, even the vaunted Cook Political Report now says it is quote “not out of the question” end quote that Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats retain their House majority….downgrading projected Republican pickups from twenty to thirty-five to a paltry ten to twenty…
So…with the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post and many other esteemed members of the Fourth Estate writing about the Republicans maybe getting a lump of electoral coal in November, I ask you, Pat Buchanan – is this Democratic victory lap warranted…or a waste of time?
MR. BUCHANAN, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: John, that was quite a wind up!
ALL: (LAUGHTER)
MR. BUCHANAN: Lookie here, John, the math still favors Kevin McCarthy and a new Republican majority.
First, as even the liberal New York Times points out, “Republicans need a mere five seats to win a House majority — and their candidates are in strong positions to win the bulk of nine districts that Mr. Trump would have won easily two years ago if the new maps had been in place. Seven of those nine seats do not have a Democratic incumbent to defend them. Republicans might have their pick of another seven Democratic seats that Mr. Trump would have won in 2020, though by narrower margins. Four of those have no incumbent to defend them….The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates 10 Democratic seats as leaning toward or likely to be Republican, against three Republican seats that lean Democratic. That works out to a Republican majority.”
Second, there’s a fella down in Palm Beach whose gonna pull his adopted party onto his Mar-a-Lago horse and ride that pony to majorities in both the House and the Senate. Come November, the Biden presidency will be as dead as the prospect of wage and price controls in a DeSantis White House.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Eleanor???!!!
ELEANOR CLIFT, NEWSWEEK: John, Pat unsurprisingly had just about everything wrong. Trump is hurting Republicans as much as the Supreme Court’s abortion decision. Trump himself might try to backtrack – he’s always known pro-life was political death for the Right – but voters are going to know that it was HIS Supreme Court picks who took away a woman’s right to choose. If Democrats get a few breaks, with inflation lower and some of the Republican House candidates in these targeted districts turning out to be loony tunes, it is now very possible, as Cook said, that the House could stay blue.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Robert Novak, what say you?
MR. NOVAK, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: John, I am told that several members of Donald Trump’s top economic team…all with deep roots in Kemponomics…are urging Speaker-in-Waiting Keven McCarthy to put out his own version of a Contract With America built around a sensible capital gains tax reduction to 2%. My sources say McCarthy will guarantee a reinvigorated tsunami if he pledges to unleash the animal spirits. If not, all bets are off.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Quickly, quickly, I ask you, Clarence Page.
CLARENCE PAGE, CHICAGO TRIBUNE: John, it isn’t just the House. Progressives are now not only dreaming about keeping the Senate majority but adding enough progressives to be able to eliminate the filibuster. As the Washington Post points out, Democrats could now hold all of their vulnerable Senate incumbents in Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Georgia, while taking Republican seats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That doesn’t even include the chance of two more Blue pickups in Ohio and North Carolina. That would mean, “so long” Manchin and Sinema stranglehold and hello voting rights, abortion rights, and more.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Exit question, on a scale of 0 to 10…with 0 meaning zero probability and 10 meaning metaphysical certitude…. How likely is it that Republicans take control of both the House and the Senate after November?
MR. BUCHANAN: A hard 8, John.
MS. CLIFT: It was a 7 just a few weeks ago, John. Now it is a 2 with a silver bullet.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: I don’t know what that means. Quickly, the Prince of Darkness…
MR. NOVAK (SORT OF SMILING?): If the Republicans go all in on cap gains, it is a 10. If they don’t, I would say a 5.
MR. PAGE: A generous 4, I would say.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: WRONG!!! The answer is….a 7…but going up to an 8 after Labor Day.
*******
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Predictions. Pat?
MR. BUCHANAN: John, Democratic pollsters have a new theory on Joe Biden’s job approval ratings and the midterms. They say voters who rate the president negatively are actually using “job approval” as a stand in for saying they think he is too old for the position. They don’t actually disapprove of the Biden agenda. So expect a lot of Democratic candidates to win in November…even in states and in districts in which they have to win vote levels well above that Biden job approval number.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Eleanor Clift?
MS. CLIFT: Florida’s BSD governor Ron DeSantis is going to find out that being harsh is not the way to win a broad mandate. Look at what he said this week:
If DeSantis stays on this path, when we look at the exit polls in November, the numbers are going to show this guy knows how to do anger…but…like his former hero Donald Trump….he can’t build a majority drawing in independents and Democrats with this act.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Interesting. Bob, who are you and why are you here?
MR. NOVAK: John, while the media focuses on abortion and drug prices, below the radar, top Republican operatives tell me they plan to use something called “The Internet” to send targeted messages on inflation, crime, and the open border to voters across the county. These below-the-radar themes will power a Red wave that will to the naked eye appear every bit as tsunami-like as what the optimists saw a few months ago. Assuming they pledge to cut capital gains also.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Mr. Page?
MR. PAGE: The problem with Dr. Oz’s Senate campaign is not tactics, strategy, or staff. The problem is the good doctor himself is not such a good candidate. By early October, he will be given up for dead by Mitch McConnell and the party donors Oz has been too lazy to hit up for contributions all summer.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Pete Buttigieg’s September 24th speech at New Hampshire Democrats big annual dinner will be closely watched in the office of The Veep…Kamala Harris…and by Barack Obama. History will record it as the biggest thing that happened in 2022 that impacted 2024. Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it, Pat!
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Bye-bye!!!
****
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