<Music> Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus , also a political science professor here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out with us and talk a little politics on a pretty exciting week, actually.

Now, you're used to hearing about an October surprise, right?

Which is sort of the startling event that happens during the election season.

Right?

That usually kind of shocks the system.

I think Partizanship is limited.

How much a surprise can happen.

So though we do have October startles that are really reshaping potentially the race three crises this week that have really affected what might happen in 2024, in just a few weeks, frankly.

Number one is the crisis in the Middle East.

Number two is the strike that's happening at the ports.

And, and the number three is, the, the survey, damage of Hurricane Helene.

Give me your sense of kind of how this is all going to play out.

Let's start with the Middle East.

Well, the Middle East is just a ticking bomb, right?

And it's it's a very unstable situation, to put it mildly.

We had in, this week, Iran sending around 180, missiles to, Israel, Israel saying, well, we're going to retaliate, Israel involvement with Hezbollah, eliminating, one of the leaders.

So it's just very complicated.

And the white House has said every, every single second, we don't want these to go a full old war, but it seems that they need to do something, right now.

And the international community needs to do something in order to stop it.

Yeah.

So these doesn't go out of control.

It's a great point.

And I think as a political liability for the Biden administration, it is very real.

You know, if a full scale kind of war breaks out in the Middle East, it would obviously draw American troops into that region, which is a big wildcard for what's going to happen.

But I think it also underscores the inability of the Biden administration to get a deal on this right, to secure some kind of lasting peace.

So that's going to be a kind of front and center issue that Donald Trump will definitely use.

It also, I think, highlights the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.

Usually we don't talk about elections being won or lost on foreign policy.

Right.

But this might be one of those things where that memory is still pertinent enough that it could be a potential problem for Biden.

And I also think it pivots the race to thinking about kind of who's harder on Iran, right, because they're going to be the villains in this.

And that means that Donald Trump has got an opening to say, look, you know, I was a hard line as it can be.

The, you know, you know, the Harrison and Biden camp will push back saying that, you know, that you busted this deal that would have kept the peace.

But it may not matter, right.

When there's this sort of warfare at present.

So we'll see how that plays out.

But the other thing it's going to affect people's pocketbooks is the strike happening at the ports across the country.

So obviously the Port of Houston is affected by this greatly.

The dockworkers are on strike, joining thousands of unionized longshoremen across the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

I remember a West Wing episode where there was a storyline about the white House being worried about an airline strike at Christmas.

Don't do it.

Well, the same problem effects here don't have a stoppage at the ports in an election.

What do you think's going to happen here?

And how could it affect Texas but also the rest of the country?

I mean, the economic losses due to the strike are very, you know, like striking.

Yes.

Right.

And, you know, it has a lot of implications.

It has a lot of implications for food import and experts for also auto parts.

And, you know, U.S. ports are extremely important for, you know, international commerce, but also in terms of moving merchandise from here to there.

Yeah.

The argument I think that, they're making is also very interesting.

Right.

And it goes I think it opens the door for a deeper discussion in terms of the role of automation.

Yes.

And part of something that has stuck with me is their mode of right.

Robots do not feed families.

Yeah.

And that is a very profound, issue.

Right.

Especially in the sense of automating these processes.

Right.

Yeah.

What's going to happen?

I mean, it's not like, for example, when you're talking about, you know, changing from, let's say, nonrenewable energy to renewable energy because workers can get training and then they can do that in terms of these particular job, it's, you know, it is what it is.

There is no, you know, alternative one way or the other.

Yeah.

So I think it's it's a very good argument that they're making and also they're making their argument in the sense of, you know, we shop in our communities, we spend our money here, we're part of the community.

So it's going to be very interesting.

But obviously, you know, this was announced, right?

Right.

So they need to also sit down at the table and start talking about it.

Yeah.

The white House is a big role to play in this.

And what they don't want to have happen is that this lasts for a long time and starts to affect the price of goods, which now has just kind of slowly come down.

So all of a sudden, at the very wrong moment for the Harris campaign, this could be an increase in prices, which would just feed into Trump's argument.

So this becomes a very sticky issue.

The other thing that's happening, of course, in some of these key states like Georgia, North Carolina and Florida that were affected by Hurricane Helene, is that there's been a lot of bouncing back and forth about, you know, the politics of this.

Right.

And what's interesting is that, like, the scholarship is pretty clear on this, that that doing this well means you're going to get a bump, right?

So the disaster declarations and following through without money means that in the state you're going to get about 1% bump.

And in counties you're getting about a 2 to 5%.

Right.

So Democrats are really worried about making sure they get their numbers to turn out in a place like Georgia that really needs it.

Florida's got a Senate race that's very competitive.

North Carolina is critical for both parties to win if they want to get the white House.

So this has a potential to really affect if it's not handled well, what happens in November?

Well, absolutely.

And you know, first of all obviously is our heart goes out for all these people.

We have lived it before.

Yeah.

Every year we are under that threat.

Yes.

But absolutely right.

And I think that the white House response has been, you know, quite point, both governors of, Georgia and North Carolina have said publicly that the, president, has been in touch.

Yeah, the president has given all the resources available.

So, he's just going to be something to see who can spin.

Yeah.

The situation politically in their favor.

But I think that people are not going to be happy if they're people are trying to make a political gain out of this.

Right.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

And of course, those people don't want to hear politics.

They want to.

Oh no.

So oh yeah, we'll see how that plays out.

But all these things are really churning out a moment where we're starting to really see the campaign percolate.

One of the things of course, this week that was really important was that we had the vice presidential debate.

Right.

We had JD Vance, the senator from Ohio, debate, Governor Tim Waltz from Minnesota.

How do you think it went?

Winners and losers?

Well, I think I mean, it was a surprise.

Yeah, yeah.

In that it was very cordial.

Exactly.

They're both nice.

So yeah.

It's been well, I agree with you, Tim.

And I agree with you.

Senator Ben's shocking I don't know, like, wait, where?

Like, who are these people?

And after they shook hands and exchanged pleasantries and then they had their spouses come up and they exchanged.

Taps on the shoulder, like everything, it was like.

And it wasn't like a debate that was like just they agreed on everything because they had some pretty hard shots at each.

Absolutely.

But they could come together after, right?

It was almost like a throwback, right to a moment where we like to have debates and we can agree.

On 1980s, more or less.

Right.

The good old days.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Like right when you were born, right?

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah.

No, it was not a very interesting, debate.

Right.

In the sense that, for me, you know, bands in the campaign trail has been, you know, quite aggressive at some times in terms of, you know, the, the speeches and in terms of his interaction, especially with the media.

Yeah.

And here he portrayed himself sort of reinventing himself as, look, you know, this is not, you know, Trumpism more this is not it's like, you know, you may disagree and we sometimes do not agree.

I'm like, who are you talking about?

Right.

Because that's not something that we have seen before.

And then on the other hand, I think was was a little bit, you know, nervous, one way or the other, could not have, for example, when he was asked if he was in Tiananmen Square and that's, you know, he's like.

Stumbled.

A little bit, stumble a little bit, ended.

Up with a sort of.

Yeah, you know, I'm a knucklehead, I don't know, dates and timeline as somebody who still thinks it's like 20, 20, like I forgive him for not remembering what day it is and what year it is.

But I think you're right.

Like, there is definitely this, kind of ethos to the campaign that is useful.

So they both did what they had to do.

Right.

Advance has to come clarify some of the things that Donald Trump has been unclear on.

Abortion was a big feature.

I also think the border issue was, I mean, how many times did he call, you know, Kamala Harris, the borders, which is not a technical designation, but which definitely ties her to this issue in a way that's not flattering.

That's something Trump has struggled to do.

Right.

And Waltz, I think, played the, you know, nice person, right?

He was able to kind of prime her policies and really kind of show that, you know, she's the one who is in, in the driver's seat.

So I think they both did that.

Well, the goal, of course, is do no harm.

Right.

And I think they both did that.

Like neither of them did great.

Any of them did poorly.

Like they were really kind of straight up the middle.

Ultimately though, I think this is the kind of sense of the future.

Right?

Like, this is the way that politics are going to be after Donald Trump is gone.

The Democrats are in transition right between the kind of old guard and new guard.

So this will be the new discussion point.

And hopefully it can be civil like this.

But I think we're going to probably see more of this as we go forward.

But is this going to change any minds?

Oh no.

Absolutely not.

Zero yeah.

No.

But I mean, it's people that know where they're going to vote.

They're going to vote regardless of, of a debate.

Right.

That's very clear.

People do not vote for the vice president.

Right.

That's another thing that we know from from research.

And, you know, the important thing I think, overall is, you know, for those that were, you know, kind of, on the fence, right?

The debate showed, perhaps did not provide a lot of information in the sense of, you know, this is a clear winner or not.

I think that what it showed to me is like, hey, we can have this disagreement, and this is disagreements are fine.

Yeah.

And even Senator Biden said, we need to iron out these differences in a way of talking.

Right.

And there were points in which, you know, people were wait, what for example, when he did not, say if, President Trump lose or did not.

Yeah, that was a 2020 election.

Pretty hard question.

Yeah.

And he didn't handle it super well.

Right.

Because if he had he wouldn't be there.

And Mike pence would be right.

Like, or they'd have somebody else who was less of an attack dog than J.D.

Vance.

I think Vance clearly needed to come into this with at least some momentum.

And I think he did.

Yeah.

His numbers are awful, right?

Is unfavorable or the highest of any VP since like Dan Quayle.

And that goes back always.

So he needed to do something to stem that.

And I think he did.

But he kind of had to stretch the truth along the way.

Right.

Like talking about how Trump tried to salvage the American Affordable Care Act, which is that is definitely, like, not the full truth.

Right?

The discussion about, like, abortion, even January 6th, how there was a peaceful transition of power.

Like, it's not always so obvious.

But look, I mean, this is an American public is gonna have to make some tough choices here about who right to lead the country.

So he is able to present that in a way that if uncounted, you know, could be a potential problem.

But ultimately, I think this debate could have been a Substack post.

Right?

We didn't need to have a full hour and a half, two hours of this.

Right?

We could have just had a quick series of interactions.

But I do think that both of them did what they had to do.

Yeah.

So I think that was at least useful as a as a starting point.

But let's talk about the border because that's going to be a huge issue.

Obviously a huge issue of topic, for this debate.

You know, Kamala Harris was at the border.

She unveiled a series of proposals that were kind of a recombination of things that she had talked about before.

But what struck you about her discussion at the border and whether or not it'll make a difference for the the sort of public for 2024?

Well, I think that, first of all, you know, Republicans have been very, very successful in shaping the narrative.

Right.

And that narrative has, moved to more, seeing immigration as a national security issue.

Yeah.

But you and I, we did some experiments about that a couple of years ago.

Asking people how they see it.

And national security tends to resonate very well because national security, you know, creates these narratives between, you know, us and them, between the unknown, between someone that could herd, you, know, you in jobs or these or that, etc..

So that plays very well whether it's true or not.

True.

So that play very well.

But and it's a coalition thing too.

Right.

So that people talk about sort of national security moms, that's a definite demographic that Donald Trump wants to win, right?

That, you know, the Harris camp is hoping to win over on reproductive freedom.

So it is honestly kind of a tug of war here.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

This is.

Oh yeah.

But this is the Republican issue right.

And I think that Democrats and Harris what they're doing, it's trying to, you know, try to limit the damage we have seen in especially in some local races, the RGB where you have, you know, Democrats saying, you know, the border is chaos, something that you would not imagine, a couple of years ago.

The Democrats are saying.

This, right.

But it's it's a, it's a, you know, orderly chaos.

Harris also said that she's going to continue with, President Biden's executive order back in June.

That curtails the limit of, asylum seekers, shut down the border in terms of these attacks, etc..

Which is a pretty like, hard border policy is like, I mean, you wouldn't call this like an open border by any.

Oh, no.

No, absolutely not.

I mean, the numbers, back in December were around, 250,000.

They were around 58, 56,000.

Right.

So everything has changed.

But something that you mentioned that is very important is, you know, we must reform our immigration system.

And we have had or we have been talking about that since 2006 and nothing has happened.

Right?

I mean, the biggest politically, it's a really tough lift.

Right.

And of course, then you have Donald Trump saying, you know, if you do something about this, then it will no longer be a campaign issue.

That's something that came up in the vice presidential debate and the presidential debate.

I do think that's a potential liability where, like Democrats are saying, we're proposing solutions, not just solutions that we care about, but bipartisan solutions from like Republican conservative senators.

So I think that's something that definitely they can use as some leverage.

The other thing is that it's kind of faded from public consciousness, right?

Like, as you said, the number of border crossings is down.

And as a result, I think it's not quite the same, like impactful issues it used to be.

That doesn't necessarily benefit the Harris team, but it's certainly a downplay.

Some of the drama of it, which could definitely have spiraled out of control.

I mean, just remember six months ago, it was looking like a complete wash for Democrats, right?

And Trump was able to talk about the border and how things were awful.

The economy was in shambles, like it looked like he was going to walk to the win.

But now things are a little different, right.

That's not to say won't change again ten times between now and you know when we actually vote.

But that's I think, useful.

The other problem for Harris is that it potentially harms her in the, like, liberal base.

Right.

Who might look at this and say that it's too harsh, right.

You're going too far.

Like we need to be much more accommodating.

I wonder if that's a potential liability for them.

I don't think it's a liability in, a huge liability.

Let's put it this way.

Because if you have, liberal, you know, preferences or whatnot, what's your option?

Yeah, right.

That's a great point.

So you have two things, right?

Yeah.

The first one is you can vote for Harris.

You cannot vote.

But if you don't vote, that means that basically you're voting for Trump.

Especially if you live in, you know, Arizona or Pennsylvania.

And, you know, perhaps you really do not like Trump.

So kind of your options are very limited, right?

Force or you can vote for the Green Party or any other candidate.

Yeah.

I was going to say Jill Stein was just at the border and she's now here in the Houston region.

So that's a possibility.

Maybe I stretch that out on purpose because possibility is like a long shot.

You're not going to get a huge percentage.

But yeah, as you say, it's like potentially option correct.

So it's going to be your options.

And I think that the you know basically Democrats position on immigration is, you know, very similar in the sense we have put this thing out.

We want to work a bipartisan deal.

They don't want to work because of these guys.

etc., etc..

So I think that eventually, eventually, Democrats are going to move right back to the center and try to move forward.

And the other thing is, you know, immigration.

Yes, it's an important issue.

Yeah, but he's not the issue.

Yeah.

So there are other issues in which, you know, those that may be having more liberal preferences, tend to score higher.

Yeah.

And you're talking about inflation.

Yeah.

You know, you're talking about the price of of gas.

Yeah.

You're talking about, you know, health care, the economy in general.

And I think that it compensates with this idea of the what is it called, the, an economy with opportunities.

Yeah.

And working for the middle class.

I think that then that incorporates balance a little bit.

These immigration issues.

Yeah.

And Vance tried to tie those things together to say that the basically the surge of immigration at the border is creating a problem for the economy, like it's making it harder to buy houses, increasing inflation.

It's a tenuous connection, but definitely feeds on people's anxieties about where the state's economy is.

So I think that's an interesting kind of dynamic, and we'll see how it plays out.

But it's certainly playing out in Texas, right where Colin already can safely be a kind of middle of the road Democrat against, more conservative Ted Cruz and maybe not take quite the heat for it where an otherwise it might be a little different.

So interesting.

But let's keep talking about the Senate in particular about the race for who's going to be the next leader.

I don't have a crystal ball, but like is a pretty good chance, looking at the map that the Republicans are going to take control of the Senate, that's the math.

That looks pretty much the most likely, which means that they're going to have to replace Mitch McConnell as majority leader.

John Cornyn, who's a senator from Texas, is obviously one of the people who is on tap to do that.

He's running against John Thune, a senator from, South Dakota, and Rick Scott, a senator from Florida.

But the two front are the two.

John's right.

Thune and Cornyn.

Obviously, Cornyn has been raising money like a House of fire.

He has transitioned, $11 million to the Republican Party for help with Senate races.

He's been raising money with JD Vance, as we were talking about last week.

John Thune, though, is no slouch.

He's been raising money, but also close with Donald Trump.

How do you see this playing out in a kind of, you know, this is a very Senate cloak room kind of a debate, right?

But it has implications for where legislation goes and implications for Texas, because with the Texas leader at the helm, you're going to see definitely the Lone Star State front and center.

Right.

Well, I don't know what they're discussing in those, backrooms will fill with smoke, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

They lock the door tight.

We can't see, but we can speculate wildly, perhaps inaccurately.

I think.

You know, I think that if, Senator Cornyn wins, right?

And actually becomes, majority leader, I think that, well, first of all, he's going to be a very small, a very small margin of victory.

And let me talk about just the Republicans voting for the.

So it is the number of voters are small.

So even if they win the majority, he's going to be small.

And we I thinking about 1 or 2 seats.

No more than that.

Right.

And that's a speculation.

Yes.

So people don't say, oh you say one of them.

It's just wild speculation.

But like probabilistically that's like all right, given where the map is.

And of course things change.

Probably like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's good.

So, so the whole idea is, Cornyn brings, I think, a more moderate stand.

He has been a moderate all his life.

And even during the Trump years, he has had disagreements with, President Trump in many, many, many occasions and had disagreements in many occasions with the junior senator of Texas and with more, conservative senators.

So I think that moderation, I think, is going to be good in the sense of getting the wheels, you know, back and running in the Senate.

Yeah.

John Thune, the senator from, South Dakota seems to me a little bit more radical in the sense of more aligned with, you know, conservative needs, like it's my way or the highway in terms of, of, of of these, however, both of them have, you know, are indicated like, yeah, especially when you're talking about judicial nominations.

Both of them have said, well, we have to see who they nominate.

If this is the case, they have to go through.

I mean, it's all very institutional in terms of what they would do.

And you kind of have to have a little bit of both of that, right?

Somebody who's going to set the agenda, but also somebody who's going to work with members.

Right.

I think John Cornyn definitely is the dealmaker in the crowd.

And so if the senators want that, then that's kind of what they're going to get.

But Cornyn may end up with a pretty tough primary fight.

There's a chance that that Ken Paxton could run against him in a Republican primary, and that could be a real problem for him.

This doesn't happen, of course, till 2026.

But just thinking way ahead, it's possible that his kind of moderate dealmaking ways may come back to bite him.

I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow.

And you're talking about 2026 already.

I like to plan ahead, my friend.

Yeah, I know I'm going to wear that week too, so I'll let you know.

I'll give you the spreadsheet on that.

But let's talk about the Texas Senate race, and about the millions of new registered voters.

This week, the Cook Political Report changed the rating of the Texas Senate race from likely Republican to lean Republican.

This means mostly nothing to, you know, most people who are watching this.

But the end result is that this is going to be a close race.

And we've been talking about this for weeks.

Part of the reason it's going to be close is the Texas has surpassed 18 million registered voters for the first time as it becomes an increasingly urban state and a more diverse state.

That is 2.6 million new voters, probably even more than that, maybe up to 3 million new voters by the time the registration deadline comes on October 7th.

If you're not registered, then please go register.

So give me your sense of what this means.

This a new state.

Effectively, this is the number of people that like the size of Connecticut that are now new voters in Texas.

How is that going to change the dynamic of this race.

If and only if these 2.6 new voters go out and vote.

And we know they probably won't, right?

I mean, historically.

I mean.

Half of Texans have.

Voted, right?

I mean, it has grown, especially with these new voters.

You see, an upward trend is not the fast trend that you would like to see.

It's not, you know, a 45 degree trend.

It goes very, very slow.

So that's one issue.

The other issue is that in order for have a significant impact, one condition has to happen.

Well, the condition means that those who actually turn out and vote vote for the same political party.

Yeah.

If there is any division 50, 50 or whatever it is, is going to be a wash and he's not going to have a significant effect.

And the majority of the turnout, especially in rural areas, that's what he's going to be driving this thing.

Now the relationship is flipping or has flipped in many.

When you make county by county comparison.

So the interesting thing here is turnout.

And if these new voters, which we do not know anything about them, right, because some of them have not participated in, in, in, in, in either the Republican or Democratic primary, this is for some of them, the new.

Yeah.

And the first election.

Yeah.

So we don't know anything about it.

It's like a box of chocolates.

Yeah.

But I mean we don't know which one.

I mean, yeah, there's a lot of flavors, but we don't know what's inside.

They're all they all look the same.

Yeah.

Outside.

And I think you're exactly right.

The same is true for the candidates.

These are voters who may not be familiar with what the Senate race looks like or what happens down ballot.

So that's one concern for them.

That means it's going to be a very expensive to try to get them to vote.

So the field operation pricing is going up.

The air war is becoming more expensive and it's becoming a much more nationalized campaign.

Right.

It's easy to be able to fall into these patterns where it's like Democrats say this and Republicans say this, that makes it hard for people like Colin already to kind of script the middle, but they want to pick up votes in there.

Yep.

So it's a new race.

And I think that's why it's critically important.

Absolutely.

It's going to be very interesting to see what happens.

So we're going to find that in about five weeks.

And remember if you're not registered to vote October 7th is the deadline to register to vote and then, to vote.

And that's it for this week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina And i'm Brandon Rottinghaus the conversation keeps up next week.

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