BUCK: How’s the midterms looking this early? I know it’s a little bit opening stages of a political battle, but we’ve also got redistricting underway and the Mom Revolution at the school board meetings still rolling across the country. Somebody who knows a whole lot about this stuff is our friend Ryan Girdusky. He’s the author of They’re Not Listening: How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution — he is watching all of this stuff very closely — also the founder of the 1776 Project PAC. Ryan, good to have you on.

GIRDUSKY: Thanks for having me.

BUCK: So, let’s start with the redistricting fight. I keep having friends that watch this very closely who ping me to say, “Why aren’t Republicans willing to take this to the mat the way Democrats are?” Is that what’s going on here or are Republicans not willing to actually wield the leverage they have to get the best districting for themselves possible going to the midterms? What are you seeing?

GIRDUSKY: No. That’s not exactly the story. Republicans are getting their clock cleaned with redistricting. Democrats are gonna walk into the 2022 cycle with about if you find — 15 more seats in their preference than they had in the last election cycle. So it’s partially because of the 2018 elections. Let’s start with that. The 2018 elections, Republicans got wiped out in governor’s elections across the entire Midwest and the Southwest.

It really, really, really hurt them. You have states like New Mexico, which had Susana Martinez 2010 as their governor with a Republican statehouse and now you have all Democrats. Same thing in Nevada, same thing in Illinois, same thing in New York now. All of those states now where the party is able to redistrict have really gutted Republicans’ chances of picking up some seats.

Now New York, for example, Republicans are gonna lose about four seats or they’re gonna be less likely to keep four seats in a state where they didn’t have that many compared to Democrats to begin with. Republicans have tried in states like Tennessee, for example, they gutted one of the two Republican seats. In Georgia, they are very aggressive — in Texas, they were very aggressive — in their redistricting. The problem is the courts have been striking them down in states like Ohio and North Carolina.

Other states where Republicans are very aggressively redistricting. You know, in North Carolina’s case it was a Democrat-majority court. In Ohio, it was a Republican-majority court who struck them down. And the courts have not been holding Democrats the same account. In New Jersey, for example, Jersey is an extremely aggressive Democrat-gerrymandered state, and in some of the places, districts are connected by water.

They’re not even connected by landmasses, and still the court upheld the Democrat redistricting effort. So it’s partially been because of the courts striking down Republicans and also in the, quote-unquote, nonpartisan redistricting it’s very clearly favor Democrats in the cases of California, for example, some incumbent Republicans are having a very, very tough time.

CLAY: So early on the argument was that Republicans were going to gain a lot of from redistricting. Obviously, that has not been the case as you are laying it out here. What would be your forecast for what is likely to happen in the House now that we kind of have a sense at least somewhat of what these school districts are gonna look like nationwide? What would be your over/under estimate for Republican pickup, and what chance would you even give for Democrats to be able to hold on, keep Nancy Pelosi in power in the House?

GIRDUSKY: Well, so there are a bunch of big states that have still not presented their maps: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Those are the big ones especially. They still don’t have their maps present. So we don’t know. About a hundred-some-odd seats are still out. With the seats that we know we have, I would say Republicans have probably a 75 to 80% chance of winning back the House. It’s looking like it’s gonna be — as of right now, as of today, it’s — an R-plus-four map. That’s what the Democrat internals say. That’s what the median public polls are all showing. Republicans right… So last year it was about a D-plus-seven map nationally. It’s looking like an R-plus-four map.

CLAY: That’s monster swing like a double-digit swing from a minus seven to a plus four if you’re Republican.

GIRDUSKY: Right. It’s a gigantic swing. And it puts Democrats in a position of weakness in places even like in Connecticut, even in Nevada in some places, even in parts of California. And Joe Biden is a giant drag on the party right now. The LA Times/Berkeley poll in California, just of California came out with their estimate saying Joe Biden has a 47% approval rating in the state of California.

This is a state he won by 30 points just a year ago. Kamala Harris has a 38% approval rating. Only 60% of Democrats and 30% of independents support or have a favorable opinion of Kamala Harris at this point. Now, that doesn’t mean Democrats are gonna start voting en masse for Republicans, but what it does show is that they may not vote at all, which wasn’t the case in several of these states.

Like, in New Jersey last year when we had the governor’s election, Republicans barely lost the governor’s election, but they had the biggest swing of the state legislative election in 30 years. Just yesterday, last night, you had in San Francisco all three liberal, progressive school board members be kicked out. And in New Jersey you had Republicans win city council races in New Jersey in very, very blue areas.

Because Republican turnout is going to be closer toward the presidential election while Democrat turnout will not be nearly as high, which will absolutely be what saves a lot of Republicans who will find themselves because of redistricting in bluer school districts. So right now, I would say Republicans have a very good chance of picking up seats across the board and are looking at — if they win the House — probably with a 230 to 240 seat majority, which is a comfortable majority.

It’s not huge. But I will say this which is the most important thing. A lot of Republicans come next year will be representing seats that Biden won. So expect a lot more moderation coming from Republicans simply because they’ll be representing school districts that voted against Trump in 2020. So the party will be bigger, but it will probably be a lot more moderate than previous — 2010 Tea Party — wave elections simply, because they won’t be representing seats that went for the president. They’ll just be representing more moderate or independent-leaning areas.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Ryan Girdusky, author of They’re Not Listening and founder of the 1776 Project PAC. Ryan, what do you think? If you were to line up just two or three messaging points for the GOP at the national level going into this midterms between now and when the votes are cast? You look at the data day in and day out. You follow very closely the competitive races, what is the secret sauce, so to speak? What’s the magic combo? What should Republicans be hammering between now and Election Day?

GIRDUSKY: Right. So I’m writing, actually, a thing about this for my National Populist Substack, our National Populist newsletter on Substack. This is the perfect time for what Trump campaigned on in 2016. Think about this. You have massive runway inflation which is a secret tax and the weakening of the dollar on the working class population. You have now Year Three of the pandemic.

Most products that they claimed were gonna be made in America are still not made in America. Those are medical supplies, our military supplies, essential services that the American public really desperately wants. It came out two days ago that China reneged on their promise with President Trump to buy $200 billion more of American products. That never happened. And, lastly, the border and immigration are a complete disaster area.

A new Gallup poll found that 70% of Republicans want to reduce legal immigration — legal, not illegal — and illegal immigration is the number one issue driving Republican voters. If you want your base to turnout, you need to emphasize all those things. It has to be a message of economic populism and nationalism when it comes to immigration. That is the message to hammer home.

That is what delivered Donald Trump his election in 2016. You can say it without being inflammatory, but this is the message that people are genuinely concerned about. People — at this point with new variants and new strains — threatening to lock them down again. They are more hesitant toward mass immigration than ever and they are sitting there and sighing, we are the country that defeated the Nazis and the communists in the last century.

Why can we still not produce ventilators in this country? Why are we dependent on Mexico for our military equipment? This is a gigantic national security, economic issue. This is the issue to lean into. And if I was also a Republican, I would say lean away from issues of promising to curb Medicare and Social Security. It is the one issue, really, that Republicans are still losing to Democrats on is fear from seniors that they’re gonna cut entitlements.

And lastly not but leastly, of course, critical race theory in schools. It is the biggest wedge issue for suburban moms, the people who hated Donald Trump, but they look at their children right now and the indoctrination and the mask mandates and the school shutdowns, and they are furious about it. And they are blaming it on the Democratic Party, which has been pro-masking and pro-shutdown for two straight years.

CLAY: Good stuff. Ryan Girdusky giving you a road map right there. Thanks for the update on redistricting. We’ll talk to you again soon.

GIRDUSKY: Thank you.