>> It is shocking just how polarized people are, how much suspicion they have for people from the other party.

They're like, "Oh, well, I used to be able to vote for someone from the other party, but now I couldn't dare do that.

Not this cycle."

Well, next cycle it's going to be the same thing.

There is a huge amount of polarization.

♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are taking stock of the midterms.

2022 had all the signs of a Republican rout, but Democrat candidates in the Congressional and governor's races outperformed expectations.

The Senate majority will stay blue, while Republicans look likely to clinch the slimmest of majorities in the House of Representatives.

It's an outcome that no one predicted, including myself I don't mind admitting.

To make sense of it all and to look at the road ahead to 2024 for both parties, I'm joined by NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith.

Later, some thoughts on President Biden's first in-person meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> Well, maybe he'll pardon us both.

>> Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.

>> Okay, shh, this is it.

This is the moment.

>> But first a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> It was supposed to be a red wave, a crimson tide, a rouge tsunami.

Okay, I might have made that up.

But as the dust settled, mixed metaphor alert, and the final votes were counted in the 2022 midterm elections, the expected Republican shellacking never came.

The Democrats are going to hang on to the Senate, and while the Republicans have retaken the House, their majority will be razor thin.

So what the heck happened?

Our folksy commander in chief may have said it best.

>> My dad used to have an expression.

He'd say, "Joey, don't compare me to the Almighty.

Compare me to the alternative."

>> In other biblical terms, for the independent voters who decided so many of these tight races, it came down to trust the devil you know.

"Sure, you don't love us," the Democrats said, "But have you seen the other guys?"

More specifically, when Democrats were able to make their campaigns about two key issues, protecting democracy and abortion, they tended to outperform Republicans.

For instance, Democrats won governor's races against Republican opponents who had either cast doubt on the 2020 election, supported further restricting abortion rights, or both.

Now, there were some big exceptions to this rule.

Take deep-red Republican Governor Ron DeSantis' trouncing victory in Florida, or Trump-backed J.D.

Vance's Senate win in Ohio.

But in many places where it counted, Democrats were able to paint their Republican opponents as too extreme on fundamental issues.

Would the results have been different if the Supreme Court hadn't overturned abortion rights, or if Trump had conceded the 2020 election?

I suspect so.

It will be fascinating, however, to see what shape the Republican Party takes going into 2024, given how poorly Trump-backed candidates fared and how well Trump's primary rival DeSantis did.

It will be equally interesting to see what shape the Democratic Party takes over the next two years in an era of divided government, and at a time when even some of Biden's most ardent supporters are hoping he doesn't run for re-election.

To talk midterms and the road ahead to 2024, I am joined by NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith.

Here's our conversation.

Tamara Keith, thanks so much for joining us on "GZERO World."

>> Glad to be with you.

>> So this is our midterm show, and I guess I want to start with the single thing that surprised you the most as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the run-up.

If we could just teleport you from a couple weeks ago to right now, the one thing that previous Tamara would say, "No, that wasn't going to happen," is what?

>> [ Chuckles ] Well, I was very uncomfortable with my gut instincts heading into this election because it felt like there were so many cross currents.

I didn't know which of my gut instincts to trust.

So I think that I would've thought that by a week after the election, we would've known with pretty great certainty the balance of power in the House.

I think I would've felt with pretty great certainty that the leadership would be pretty easily solved in the House and the Senate.

But instead it's taken a long time.

Not because we were surprised that it would take a long time for votes to be tallied in California and Oregon, but because it matters for the balance of power what those votes show.

>> Because it's close.

Yeah, and the House certainly was where everyone -- it was just a question of how big the Republican win would be, not a matter of their holding on for the slimmest of potential margins.

What is the principle reason for that?

I hear so many different takes, whether it's, oh, Independents really swung for Republicans, it's candidate quality, the democracy message really mattered.

Young people and women showed up.

Rank, if you would, by priority, what are the reasons you think that it ended up being so close?

>> Well, and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I have all the answers because I think the answer is all of the above in various quantities.

I think absolutely, as I was out interviewing voters, even as they said that their top issue was inflation, what was motivating them to vote in many cases, and I spent a fair bit of time in a suburban swing district outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, so a purple district, a swing area, and repeatedly voters told me that abortion was what was driving them to vote, that democracy issues were driving them to vote.

And these weren't all the hard-line Democrats who were saying that.

So I think that the crossovers, the ticket splitters, the people who had reservations with some of the candidates are the reason for this.

And as you say, Independents in a midterm year usually go against the party of power, and that's not what happened this time.

>> The mainstream American public is a bell curve on abortion.

It's 13, 15 weeks, it's safe, it's legal, it's rare.

That's not where these races were at all.

>> Right.

And if Republicans were talking about abortion in this year, it was not good for them because you just ended up with a lot of really easy to cut campaign ads for Democrats.

>> In a sense, it brings me back to what you were saying at the beginning, that usually incumbents have a problem, but Republicans essentially became incumbents on abortion because they control the judiciary, right?

In the sense that for 50 years they were able to run as opposition on abortion, and suddenly they had to run as if they were the policy makers on abortion, and that put them in a really difficult spot.

>> It certainly did.

And the reality is that in divided government, no national ban on abortion was going to be passed, or signed certainly.

It wasn't going to become law.

And President Biden has now admitted that it's pretty unlikely that the numbers exist to codify Roe, but there were a lot of Democratic candidates that were running on codifying Roe.

And Roe is not a policy of unlimited abortion.

It's not the sort of caricature that Republicans would paint about the extreme Democratic position.

And Democrats did an incredibly good job of not actually talking about what limits they wanted, other than to say they wanted to codify Roe.

>> So as it looks now, the House would appear to be about flip to the Republicans, a very, very narrow majority.

But nonetheless, in red districts across the country, a lot of strongly MAGA candidates did win.

What do you think that means?

What does that look like for governance in the United States for the second half of the Biden administration?

>> I think that there's not going to be a huge amount of brand-new policy making that happens in the next two years, and often in the second two years of a president's term, not a whole heck of a lot happens.

But certainly what this does do is give President Biden a foil.

When his agenda isn't getting through, no longer does he have to blame his own party.

He can blame the other guys for blocking his agenda.

It was not easy for Nancy Pelosi to lead the House with the narrow majority that Democrats had in the last two years.

That was not easy.

And she is one of the most skilled tacticians of governance that you could imagine.

It is not going to be easy to get the Republican conference to do governing stuff.

They'll probably have a fairly easy time passing messaging bills, but anything that would have a chance of moving in the Senate or anything that would have a chance of actually getting to the president's desk, I can't see a lot of big things happening.

That said, no matter what the balance of power in Congress, they have to figure out how to fund the government.

And that is going to be a heavy lift, especially because there are many members of the House Republican Conference who have never voted for a budget and don't intend to start.

>> Do we think that a narrowly Republican-led House is one that will do its darnedest to turn the tables on the Biden administration, proceed with massive amounts of investigations, show trials, even impeachments, "turn about is fair play" from that perspective, or no, because it's too narrow and you can't get everyone on board?

>> I'm not sure.

I think we need to see how the leadership elections shake out, need to see just how narrow that majority is.

Certainly they are going to be under pressure from their base to deliver something.

Assuming they get the House, they got the House; their voters want something to show for it.

And certainly you have members of Congress on the Republican side who have serious things that they want to investigate.

And then you have members of Congress on the Republican side who have less serious things that they want to investigate.

It's clear that President Biden is hoping they overreach and overreach in the same way that Newt Gingrich's investigations were felt to have overreached that led to his ultimate ouster.

I don't know how far they will go, but I do have fond memories of past Republican congresses making life pretty miserable for the Obama administration and covering those sorts of investigations.

>> In the aftermath of the midterms, the names that you hear as the most powerful individuals are governors.

We hear a lot about DeSantis, we hear a lot about Abbott, we hear a lot about Whitmer, we hear a lot about Newsom.

I mean, these are people with a lot of executive authority over significant economies in their own rights, significant populations, and they performed really well as incumbents.

Does that change how you think about American democracy?

Does it make it more decentralized?

Does it change how you think about the 2024 races?

Give me your thoughts.

>> And add Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, to the list of Democratic governors who won easily and in a -- >> Add Kemp, Brian Kemp in Georgia, frankly.

>> Exactly.

Brian Kemp.

>> I mean, Stacey Abrams got thumped pretty hard this time around, right?

Yeah.

>> And part of what that says is that people like their governors, and it is perceived as a different role than a senator or a president.

What does it mean for 2024?

Certainly Ron DeSantis' star was already rising.

There was no question about that.

As I was out interviewing voters, they would bring his name up unprompted.

He has done an incredibly good job of bottling liberal tears or whatever you want to call the ability to rile up the left and garner a ton of attention along the way.

He's done a really good job of that.

In addition to being a very large state governor whose state is doing fairly well, he also is just a conservative celebrity in the way that could be really helpful.

So his star is rising, that's for sure.

What does it mean for 2024?

Oh, boy.

I think that we are likely to see President Trump running for president.

>> In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.

>> We're likely to see some other people who were in his administration running against him.

And the question is whether -- >> Mike Pence has a book to sell.

I mean, there's no question he's got to run, right?

>> And Mike Pence, when you write the book, that is the thing you do.

You do the book tour and then a few months later you declare you're running for president.

It is the usual cycle of things, and he's got the book.

So there will be people who will run regardless of whether Trump runs or not.

I don't know if Ron DeSantis is one of them.

He's young.

He was just re-elected governor.

He probably of anyone has the best chance of beating Trump in a primary.

But the question is whether anyone has a chance of beating Trump in a primary.

And there were a lot of people who thought that they could in 2015 and they couldn't in 2015, 2016.

>> Now, in a very polarized environment, you hear from a lot of serious Democrats, they look at DeSantis and they try to paint him with the Trump brush and say, "This guy is a young Trump.

This guy is going to be an authoritarian, he is going to be an election denier."

Is that fair?

>> That's a good question.

And I don't know how he would govern if he were elected president.

I do know that he is young and he is far more disciplined than Trump.

So if he has policy goals that he wants to achieve, he would be more likely to figure out how to pull the levers of government to make it happen.

He's not going to be somebody that tweets in the middle of the night some idea and then has his administration figuring it out how to do it on the back end.

He would figure it out on the front end, plot it out, and then announce it, which would potentially increase his potential for success.

Every person is different.

I don't think that he has been tested on truly whether he would accept the results of his own election, for instance, because he's won.

>> Now, when you look at the Republican Party, and this is clearly a moving target, but as of right now, is the Republican Party still a MAGA party?

Is it still Trump's party?

Those are two different questions.

>> Right, those are different questions.

I think that there are also different ways to answer it.

Are you talking about the party?

Are you talking about the elected officials?

Are you talking about the establishment?

Or are you talking about the voters, and which share of the voters?

>> To start let's talk about the party and let's talk about what happens in 2024 because of course that's what's going to matter the most for the direction of the party.

>> Right.

So here's what I would say, is that there are a lot of voters who I talk to who said that they'd rather somebody other than Trump be the nominee, but if Trump is the nominee, they'll vote for him.

I mean, Bill Barr, the former Attorney General who has almost nothing good to say about the president he served, he said he'd vote for Trump if he was the nominee.

There are very few Republicans who would go so far as to say, "Well, if democracy is on the line, I will vote for a Democrat."

There just aren't that many because we are hyper-polarized.

>> We are too far down the road to take much solace in saying, "Okay, you just had a more normalized midterm election.

A lot of the election deniers among governors, Secretary of State positions didn't win.

Now we can take a breath."

The divisions and the polarization in U.S. politics are going to persist well beyond these midterms.

>> The level of -- You see the polarization in polls, but then going out and talking to real people, it is shocking just how polarized people are, how much suspicion they have for people from the other party, how much they're like, "Oh, well, I used to be able to vote for someone from the other party, but now I couldn't dare do that, not this cycle."

Well, next cycle it's going to be the same thing.

There is a huge amount of polarization, and yeah, I don't exactly know how that gets better.

I don't think that polarization gets better just by electing Democrats, even though I think the president seemed to imply that, "Oh, well, we're on a better course now.

We've elected more Democrats.

It wasn't a Republican wave."

I do think that the lack of success of election deniers means that, especially running for Secretary of State positions and certain governorships around the country, means that the guardrails that held in 2020 will be there again.

And those guardrails held on by a thread, but those guardrails held.

I think one of the more reassuring things about the last week or so is that any number of people who denied the results of the 2020 election have accepted the result of the 2022 election even when they lost.

And that is an encouraging sign for democracy.

I mean, this is one of the most basic core things in elections, and not something that any of us a few years ago would've thought would even be a concern.

But people have to concede.

That's part of our system.

>> So January 6th redux actually looks less likely today than it did a few weeks ago?

>> Certainly with the congressional elections.

Now, the question is, does Donald Trump run again?

Does he win?

Does he lose?

There are a large, not majority, but a large number of Republicans in particular and just very pro-Trump people who would do almost anything that he said.

>> Now, before we go, I haven't asked you at all about the president, President Biden.

Of course now with two years under his belt, a strong midterm response, better than most would have expected, as well as a number of legislative accomplishments he can point to.

The guy is 80.

Do you think it is significantly more likely that he now seeds the way for an open Democratic primary and says he's not going to run again?

>> [ Laughs ] Do I think it is significantly more likely?

No.

He...

He is going to have some family conversations, as he did several years ago.

He's going to be making some big decisions.

I don't think that he thinks he's done.

He talks a lot about fate, and he knows that he's 80 years old and he knows that every day is a blessing at a certain point in your life.

And yet he feels strongly that he's still in the game and that he beat Trump once and that he is the best person to beat Trump again.

>> So, Tamara Keith, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

That is the message I'm getting and I really appreciate having you on.

>> Thank you.

♪♪ >> On the heels of success in the midterm elections, President Biden headed to Bali, Indonesia -- who doesn't want to do that?

-- for the start of this year's G20 Summit.

And his first big meeting was the biggest with China's president, Xi Jinping.

Biden and Xi have met many, many times through the years, including five virtual visits during the COVID pandemic.

But it was the first time the men have been face-to-face during Biden's presidency.

There was a lot to discuss, three hours worth to be exact.

And while there were flash points, especially around China's threats against Taiwan's autonomy and increasing economic competition between the world's two biggest economies, it was largely a moment to settle things down.

>> As the leaders of our two nations, we share a responsibility in my view to show that China and the United States can manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict, and to find ways to work together on urgent global issues.

>> And the two most powerful leaders on the planet did find some common ground, agreeing that nuclear war in Ukraine or anywhere else should never be waged.

That's sort of a relief.

The nations also reiterated their desire to cooperate on climate policy.

After the meeting, President Biden told reporters he found Xi to be direct and straightforward.

He's been saying that for years.

And that it remains possible to avoid a cold war between the world's two largest economies.

>> He was clear and I was clear that we'll defend American interests and values, promote universal human rights, and stand up for the international order and work in lockstep with our allies and partners.

We're going to compete vigorously, but I'm not looking for conflict.

I'm looking to manage this competition responsibly.

>> The White House said Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will soon travel to China and diplomats from both nations will begin to work on the U.S.-China relationship together.

♪♪ And now to "Puppet Regime," where some strange turkeys are getting into that Thanksgiving spirit.

Roll my tape.

>> Gobble gobble.

>> Dude, don't harsh my mellow.

>> Sorry.

I'm just so excited though.

It's that time of year again.

>> You mean when the humans eat us while they say what they're thankful for?

>> No.

Well, yes, but also the national Thanksgiving presidential pardon is coming up, and you know what that means.

>> You really think it's going to be you?

>> How could it not be me?

I'm cute.

I'm always well-groomed.

I'm vaxxed and boosted.

Plus, I don't know if you heard, but I qualify for the Student Debt Relief Program.

So in pardoning me, the old man will be pardoning my debt too.

>> Bro, you didn't hear.

That's on hold.

>> What?

[ Scoffs ] Whatever.

I suppose you think you'll be the one to be pardoned?

>> Most def, my guy.

Grandpa Joe's been pardoning weed smokers left and right.

>> So you think you qualify just because you're stoned all the time?

>> Well, you think you qualify because you got student debt?

>> Hmm.

Well, maybe he'll pardon us both.

>> Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.

>> Okay, shh, this is it.

This is the moment.

>> Bad news, gobblers.

>> What?

What happened?

>> What is it?

>> With inflation and food prices through the roof, I'm going to have to ask you both to make the ultimate sacrifice.

So see you at the slaughterhouse.

>> Both: What?!

>> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's on our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see, or you don't, but you just want to keep doing midterm elections because we like that here, why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com?

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...