Hold the Red Tsunami: GOP Midterm Victory Not Guaranteed

CLAY: Buck, I gotta tell you, though, you know that I am a huge gambler. I love to gamble on sports. I love gambling markets in general. Just the opportunity to kind of the check and see where the money is going, how things are lining up. And legally you are not allowed to gamble on politics in the United States. But England you can bet basically on any race that is out there. And so I’m constantly clicking refresh every day, basically, to follow Senate campaigns, to follow House races, odds of who might be president in 2024 because, rather than just pay attention to what people are saying and what the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal might be writing or what they’re saying on television, I like to see where people are actually putting their money.

And I want to say this, as we are coming up on the end of August. The Senate is in dire straits right now. I don’t want to lie to anybody out there. We’ve been saying there should be a Red Wave. But right now there is not going to be a Red Wave in the Senate. In fact, it’s possible Republicans could lose three or four seats in the Senate, which would be devastating. And even in the House right now, if you follow the dollars and what people are gambling, Republicans are still the favorite, but all the momentum and all of the money is rolling in on Democrats.

We are throwing a party on election night in Nashville, and we are excited to do that. But, Buck, we were texting with our boss, Julie Talbott, about some of the details on the party. I was thinking about it on my flight which of course is delayed by like three and a half hours because you can’t fly anywhere in the country right now to Salt Lake City, we may be trending towards… we got the balloons ready to drop, and things may not be going like we were hoping.

And so I was telling you off air here in the studio, I think it’s time for Republicans to stop saying, “Hey, we’re just kind of getting out of the way, we’re gonna let Joe Biden kind of dig his own grave.” Being anti-Democrat is not enough. You have to sell what you’re for. And I think it’s time to start selling.

BUCK: Who’s making headlines right now on the Republican side? Who’s coming forward and speaking about issues in a way that resonates with the GOP base, that sounds like there is an alternate plan? Biden stinks at this, while true, isn’t inspiring. And Biden’s not on the ballot.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: Which is what we are seeing now. This is something we’ve been prepared for for a while. Even a lot of Democrats, even some independents, I’m sorry, are gonna say to themselves, “Okay. The administration, it hasn’t worked out like they said it would, but I still like my guy” or “my gal in my state,” whether it’s for a congressional race, for a Senate seat. And this is why the — you know, you end up — just like sports, right? Whoever has more points on the —

CLAY: Yeah, right.

BUCK: — screen at the end wins. These are the obvious statements that we all have to remind ourselves of. Candidates matter.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: The candidate obviously matters a lot in Pennsylvania. I mean, the “crudite” ad by Dr. Oz was not confidence inspiring in that moment. The candidate matters in Georgia. Herschel Walker has gotta get out there and make noise. And there are other places we could point to as well. The phenomenon here, which is the — I think there was an expectation among the Republican base. And I don’t know ’cause we hadn’t really seen much polling on this. This is just me reading the tea leaves. They go after Trump. And a lot of Trump people are very fired up right now. I’m fired up about it. You are.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: We got Alan Dershowitz joining us later to talk about this affidavit that may be unsealed. You’ve got the CFO of the Trump Organization pleaded guilty, is going to prison. They’re bringing — not just bringing charges, they got him on criminal charges. People are saying he may flip. They’re going after Rudy Giuliani. There’s this all-out assault going on using the legal process as a weapon against everything and everyone Trump affiliated and related. And, Clay, is it possible that some independents are actually exhausted by this? Is it possible some people, not the true believers, not the Trump voters of the past, but the people we want to switch over now to deliver that Red Wave, are they just saying, look, I can’t take it, I can’t handle more of this? I worry about this.

CLAY: I think it’s a very valid concern. And, by the way, I think it’s a underlying strategic attempt by Democrats who know that Biden has failed virtually everywhere to turn the midterms into a referendum on Trump in some way, which distracts from Democrat failure. And let me tell you, we have been discussing in the Senate in turkey that these races are going to be decided in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Those are the five. You could toss in New Hampshire. Certainly it’s bad for Republicans if North Carolina and Ohio, for instance, end up being competitive. Those should be right now safe seats in terms of Republicans. But if you look at the odds market — and I’m not talking about polls, right? ‘Cause I understand the apprehension, reticence, and discredit that many people have for polls in general. I like to see where people are putting their money. Right now, Democrats are favored to win in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. The only of those five seats, our buddy Ron Johnson is favored, and there was just a poll that came out with him down seven. But of those five, only one of those seats right now, if you were a gambling person and you wanted to put money on who’s going to win, all of the four that I just mentioned — Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada — the Democrat’s favored. That ain’t good, Buck.

That is suggestive, if that happened, Democrats would have a very solid base, they’d have a three-seat majority in the Senate. And you might be thinking, okay, well, why does this matter? Buck, we know that Democrats were willing to push through nearly $800 billion in additional spending because they were worried about losing the House. What would they spend and what would they do if they controlled Senate and somehow they managed to pull a rabbit out of their hat and control the House? I think it’s time to get really nervous, to get really focused, and to recognize that simply focusing on Biden burning himself and the Democrat House down is not going to be enough to win, in particular in these Senate races, Buck, where you know you have to sell yourself on all of these individual marketplaces. Senates turn on personality oftentimes — Senate races, personality, statewide, more than politics.

BUCK: Clay, the Republican candidates need to be hitting on the issues that voters actually care about and directly tying it not just to Biden, but to the Democrat Party and the Democrat agenda, which has led to so much of this. Why have we seen the biggest surge in crime, in, really, every major city with only a few exceptions in the country, Democrat backing of progressive prosecutors, of defund police, of ending, quote, “mass incarceration,” and their just soft-on-crime agenda. That should be something that every candidate in every state is tying any Democrat they’re running against to.

Why is the border open? We’re gonna talk to Tom Homan later on in the show as well, former director, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, super knowledgeable about the border. Was doing that for almost 30 years. He’s gonna talk to us how it’s the worst it’s ever been. You’re gonna have two million illegals officially coming into the country this year, and you’re gonna have probably another half a million to a million got-aways on top of that. These are unprecedented numbers. What people think that does to public expenditures? What do you think that does to emergency rooms, to schools? New York City and Washington, D.C., are complaining about it right now. So we know what that actually means.

And then of course inflation, everything more expensive, people running up household debt, and the Democrat response is to tax you more and spend more money. GOP has got to go on offense, has to make the case not only about the failures of the Democrat Party and the ideas pushed by it but also what would the GOP do? What are they offering right now? Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida goes on offense.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Who lately can you point to — and Trump is under siege legally, right? So he’s just trying to avoid the next, you know, FBI raid. He’s not in office right now. Who at the GOP national level is making a case that’s resonating? I’m not saying nobody is. People are yelling at me, “You know, well, JD Vance is doing a great job and Blake Masters is doing a great job,” and lots of people. But it has to be — you know, it has to be he misunderstood. It has to be nationwide. People have to be hearing these voices. We’re gonna try to bring many to them as possible to all of you on this show. But, Clay, there’s been an obvious momentum shift. And it happened, it turned on a dime. And that’s what you’re seeing in the betting markets, and that’s what everybody’s feeling. The good news, though, ’cause I don’t want us to despair is that there’s still time to turn this thing around.

CLAY: There is. And I just think people need to recognize — look. We’re gonna be honest with you. There are some people out there who are just gonna cheerlead and cheerlead and they’ll take you right over the waterfall into oblivion and you will have no idea it’s coming. I’m saying look at what the trend lines are, recognize that you need to be aggressive, positive sign, Buck, ’cause you said you wanted positive here. The people that are running red states — Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp, and Greg Abbott in big battleground states of Florida, of Georgia, and of Texas, all three of those governors are looking like they are going to win very, very comfortably, even though there are certainly going to be massive attacks levied against all three. Why? Look at what Greg Abbott did. He went to war with the border issue and has won on that issue. Ron DeSantis has been comfortable stepping in the ring and throwing punches constantly. Governor Brian Kemp. I think he’s done a phenomenal job as the governor of Georgia. He deserves a second term.

These guys are leading the charge right now. But, again, five seats that are gonna decide the Senate, right now Democrats favored in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada from a betting market perspective, not even talking about the polls. Only Wisconsin — and look. New Hampshire is a battleground state. But if it ends up being close in Ohio and North Carolina, it’s not a good sign. We are trying to sound the alarm and let you know what needs to happen. This cakewalk that many people anticipated as the Red Wave was surging earlier this year, it’s not gonna be as much of a cakewalk right now based on the data and analytics that you see.

BUCK: While you’re struggling to pay for eggs and milk and rent and gas, just remember that these lib lunatics in charge thought it was time to spend a few hundred billion dollars of your money on windmills and electric car tax credits.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s their focus, everybody. So remember that one. And we haven’t even gotten on the covid issue today, but we will return to it because that is where the accountability has to be clear and overwhelming. Otherwise, oh, you think they won’t do all that crazy stuff again? Think again.