The Head vs the Heart in Big Ten Country (with Tim Alberta)
09:19 Share

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we've got a Big Ten Focus Group matchup with swing groups in swing states, Ohio and Michigan. In Michigan, we have a group of swing voters, the people who voted for Trump in 2016, but not in 2020, talking about the governor's race between incumbent Gretchen Whitmer and Republican Tudor Dixon.

And in Ohio, we've got a very interesting group, all women, that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. But they also voted for Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown in 2018, just two years earlier. And if Tim Ryan is going to pull off a big Buckeye upset, J.D. Vance in the Senate race, those are the voters he needs to win over.

There have been a lot of summer polls with Tim Ryan leading Vance, sometimes by large margins. But as we will discuss, elections are not decided in August. We'll also hit a couple of big topics like Biden's student loan forgiveness and abortion. To do all of this, we're going back to one of our favorite guests, the medium of the Midwest, Tim Alberta, writer for The Atlantic. Hey, Tim, thanks for being here. Sarah, put that on my gravestone. Thank you for having me.

Did you like that? We actually talked about that in the office. I was like, he needs like a name. And we came up with the medium of the Midwest. I was going to call you the Midwest man, like Florida man, but... I love it. I've been called a lot worse. So really this is... I don't have any tattoos, but were I to choose to go get one today, that would be the one seed. Put it on your body. I like it. Okay. So wait.

Rarely do we have a guest come back as quickly as we have you come back. But whenever we're going to talk about Michigan, there's really just nobody better. And so we wanted to do this Midwest episode. So I appreciate you coming back so quickly. But one of the things you said when we talked last time is that you conduct your own kind of informal focus groups. Like you walk around grocery stores, like accosting people with questions. Have you been doing that lately? Like, are you still talking to people? What do you just tell us overall? What are you hearing out there?

Yeah, all the time, much to the chagrin of the people at my local Sam's Club.

I wouldn't say that there's anything super revelatory other than I think it just generally tracks with the sentiments that we're picking up in public polling and that you're hearing from campaign consultants, Republican, Democrat alike over the last, I'd say three to five months, which is just a sort of very steady, very gradual trend.

but very discernible shifting of the tide here. Whereas five, six months ago, this looked to be a Republican wipeout election where Democrats were going to be lucky to salvage a 35 to 40 seat minority in the House.

and a five to seven seat minority in the Senate, they are now, I think, very much in a position to hang on to the Senate potentially, and to potentially limit their losses to the single digits in the House, which would effectively, you know, given Kevin McCarthy's problems in the House GOP, not to get deep into the weeds there on inter-conference politics on the Republican side, but if

If Democrats only lose, you know, six, seven seats in the House, then effectively, that's not even a real majority for the Republicans because of some of the problems they have on their side of the aisle. So if you had told any Democrat this five months ago, they would have told you you were crazy. And-

There's obviously the Dobbs decision and the abortion issue at play, but there's a whole constellation of sort of issue sets and of market fundamentals and political fundamentals here that are all kind of converging in the Democrats' favor in a way, Sarah, that I would say that we haven't seen before.

In any midterm election, at least in our lifetimes, I can't think of a comparable situation here where you have a relatively unpopular first term president, party facing Steph, headwinds, sort of all the fundamentals working against them, heading into the summer of midterm election year. And then suddenly, sort of everything changes.

turns at once and the stars align. And that is, to make a long answer just a tiny bit longer, that is what you pick up constantly, just in the vibe conversations with people, folks who were super down on the economy, super down on gas prices, super down on all things Democratic just a few months ago. They're still not raving about Biden, but they are not slamming the door in Democrats' face the way that they were earlier this year. And that's very discernible.

Yeah. And if I could just take host privilege for one second and offer one other thing that I think is sort of under-discussed in the vibe shift, which is just the candidates. Like, you know, we got out of primary season and people looked around and said, oh, so we got Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano and J.D. Vance and Herschel Walker. And look at all these stinkers. Like, they're either sort of election denial kooks or they're anti-abortion extremists or they're just

extremists in general or they're Trumpy or they're weird television doctor that has like reams of footage available to make fun of him with who's not from the state. Like that to me is the other piece of this is now that the pictures in play and like this is the thing that I've been arguing sort of for a long time is that the 2010 opportunity to look around and be like the Sharon Angle, the Christine O'Donnells, that they're just it's all over the map. Those kinds of candidates. Do you agree or disagree with that?

Yeah.

you know, you've got inflation, you've got food prices up, you had gas prices way up, you've got just this general fear. A couple of the panelists in your Ohio group were talking about how afraid they are of a deep recession right around the corner. And of course, we did have that in 2010 to the parallel you were just making. And yet, even with all of the

economic fundamentals at their back, Republicans still managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in a handful of races because of the political fundamentals. And the political fundamental was we nominated really bad candidates, right? We nominated candidates who were uniquely ill-equipped

to run and win, even in this incredibly favorable environment. And I think the last time we talked, we touched on a couple of those folks. I think we talked about the Arizona group that you had, the Michigan group you had. And in both of those states,

Republicans are in very real danger of repeating history in that sense, where had they nominated more mainstream center-right, generally acceptable candidates, they would be in a position to run the tables in those states potentially. And instead, they're looking at having the tables run on them. And that's a pretty remarkable swing to take into consideration. Totally.

All right, Tim, but before we go any further, we got to make a pitch to get these guys over to Bulwark Plus. You think people should be Bulwark Plus members, right? Yeah, I mean, if only to keep Charlie Sykes from having to sleep out on the streets, I think we owe him that much. I think we owe him that much, too. So if you want to hear the rest of this podcast, you're going to have to sign up for Bulwark Plus.

Hey, everyone. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all of you listening to this podcast. I hope you love listening to it as much as I love making it. But the time has come. We are going to paywall this bad boy because it's time for all of you guys to become Bulwark Plus members. If you're a reporter or a producer, and I know a lot of you listen to this show, it's time to join up at Bulwark Plus. And I'll tell you what, as we go into the midterms, this show is going to get hot.

We're going to have swing voters, undecided voters from all the big races, as well as some of the best analysis from your favorite reporters and political observers. So here's the deal. You can get the first two weeks on me for free. And then after that, you're going to pay just $10 per month or a hundred bucks for the whole year.

As a member, you're going to get ad-free episodes of this podcast, as well as Charlie's podcast, as well as the secret podcast that I do with JVL, and then all of our newsletters, our live broadcasts, and other community features. So go to thebullwork.com slash focus group, and you can claim that special offer to get you the two weeks free. So that's thebullwork.com slash focus group. Thanks, everyone. ♪