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

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

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

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking some politics.

A pretty exciting, busy week going on.

A lot happening legislatively at the national level and the state level.

Lots of interparty conflict, some actual fistfight.

It's almost we'll hope for next week.

But at this point, it seems like everybody could use a break for the Thanksgiving holidays.

But before that, Jeronimo, there's a bunch to chat about.

A lot of people are just quitting the bailout.

Actually, one of the big news of the week is that Tim Scott, who is a senator from South Carolina, is suspending his presidential campaign.

He's not ending it.

He's suspending because there's an old adage in campaigns that says that it's not so much the campaign's end that they run out of money, and he definitely ran out of money.

So that's one huge issue, He says publicly as kind of a surprise to his staff who were uninformed about this, that he was suspending his campaign.

But look, middling poll numbers and inability to raise money and just no way to kind of stand out in the Republican field means you're not going to go anywhere.

And like you mentioned last week and we've talked about for the past few weeks, you've got a real kind of top cycle here, right, of Haley, Trump and DeSantis with can anyone else emerge?

We don't know.

But no, it's.

Not going to be Tim Scott.

Not going to be Tim Scott.

Right.

Give me your sense, though.

Look to me.

Tim Scott's a solid candidate for the Republican, right?

Right.

I mean, he's a conservative without being a Trump acolyte.

He's the first black Southerner elected since Reconstruction, which is an impressive feat.

Also gives you a sense of sort of his ability to kind of overcome these odds.

He's got working class roots.

He's a military veteran.

He's a man of faith.

Why didn't it work?

What's going on?

Well, I think simply didn't work because the message, yeah, he had a you know, a positive message, right, more I would say eighties, nineties type of maybe seventies.

That's my jam.

Yeah, right type of you know Republican message right.

A message of hope a message of you know we can do this together.

Yes.

We're conservative.

However, that doesn't mean that we cannot talk to the other side.

It compromise was a very positive message and that didn't work.

Nothing.

Not in today's politics.

Zero.

Right.

It didn't get traction.

He had some problems with some big funders, Larry Ellison, that in theory was going to need a significant amount of money, never came to fruition.

So I think it was the message and it was because, you know, Trump sucks the air out completely, like one of those vacuums that you use when you're packing and those space bags.

And he sucks everything.

So you just kind of throw it all in there.

Yeah, I know, But you have to be more organized.

Yeah, that's right.

That's why I can never run for president.

I know how to be organized.

And that was another issue for him too.

And even the fact that he was from South Carolina.

Right.

Which is going to feature prominently in this race, you know, he wasn't able to really get his ducks in a row.

So that's a huge problem.

But I actually want to ask you a different question.

This became kind of an ongoing I don't know if it's a question or an issue, but he is not married and has a girlfriend.

And so finally the girlfriend, this last debate kind of comes out and she's an interior decorator, I think in South Carolina.

Doesn't really matter.

But that was something that like did make it rounds in terms of like questions about whether or not he was like ready to run and competent to run.

Do you think that this played into some of these issues in terms of people rejecting his candidacy or is this just kind of like political fodder that like only people who are like, you know, scrolling Twitter all day, like you and me?

Right.

I don't know.

I mean, I think that, you know, people are not in the space to sit down and listen to the politics or analyze the politics or analyze whatever candidates have to offer.

Right.

It's just, you know.

People want basics.

Right.

Exactly.

And we have seen in the debates, right.

Vivek Ramaswamy just talking about, you know, Tik Tok and it's okay.

And why do I care about that?

What is Tik Tok?

I mean, no, not what is Tik Tok?

You know, tell me, why are you going to do in terms of issues?

How's it going to make my life better?

Exactly right.

How are you going to support this thing?

Don't talk about, you know, our kids are using Tik Tok.

Yes.

Like, of course.

Yeah.

Everybody's using Tik Tok.

What about it?

Right.

Right.

Next.

And how are you going to grow the economy?

How are you going to make health care more affordable, less affordable?

You know, real politics, real policy.

Not just chasing.

Exactly.

And, you know, the issue of Tim Scott's girlfriend is just an issue.

Another distracting issue is that like but why no one is paying attention to the message.

Right.

And it is a high contrast in message be between you know, the the leader or not the leader, the one that is polling higher a.k.a Trump Yeah and he is a No.

One who's.

Not really.

He's not married with a girlfriend.

It's like it doesn't matter, but it looks like Joe Manchin is through with the Senate.

That's another sort of important piece of news this week.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has announced that he is not running for reelection.

This means probably Republicans are going to snag that seat in West Virginia.

What do you think?

Probably.

I mean, it is a consistently, you know, red state that has become more and more and more conservative.

To Trump plus 15 or something.

Right?

Definitely.

But popular.

You never know.

Right?

At these times.

You never know.

You never know if there's going to be, you know, someone that he's going to create.

Another contrast you have these issues of abortion.

If the economy starts to pick up come November.

I mean, there's a lot of variables, right?

Yeah, Right now, it's yes, maybe.

Yeah, we will have to see.

That's three.

Conditional.

I know.

Unknowns, but I'm with you because there's a lot of things we don't know.

But one thing we do know is that the dealmaking center in Congress is effectively being hollowed out.

Right?

Mansions leaving.

You had Mitt Romney, who's left.

And if you look at the kind of trajectory of where moderates are in the Congress, especially in the Senate, it's basically like, you know, a ghost town.

We're going to talk about this next week when we talk more about political polarization, because it's a symptom of that.

But this actually has really strong implications for how things are going to get done in Congress.

So.

I mean, true.

However, you know, my question is, if Democrats really, really, really say, oh yeah Senator Manchin has my back and the answer to that is like no, sometimes.

I mean, I'm perhaps strategically would be easier to know that a Republican is going to be occupying that seat comes November, I mean, or not.

Right.

But you need someone that is going to be okay.

Just let me know in which team you are.

Just I just want to know, how are you going to bat this side or this.

Right.

But you cannot be playing both sides.

So for them, it's do I see it as complete, I guess something negative for for Democrats in the Senate?

Not necessarily.

It's a mixed bag, right?

Yeah.

But I mean, they can count on him on some big stuff like the inflation reduction act.

That's something they got him on.

But on other issues, maybe he's a little more like wavering.

Right.

That's an issue that they certainly are going to have to worry about.

But I think on balance, I'd rather have the seat than not have the seat, of course.

But there's been talk about him actually running for president.

And the theory is that somebody in the middle could do better to kind of attract more voters.

right.

So you're a no on that.

Yeah, No.

Solidly as a third party?

No.

As a Democrat, you know.

No, probably.

No, no, no.

But yeah, but as a third party is going to be extremely complicated.

Right.

And you need a lot a lot, a lot of money.

Yeah.

Speaking of money, the question I have with respect to Texas because, like, West Virginia is all well and good.

But let's talk about Texas, the thing that we care the most about.

There's an election coming up, right?

Ted Cruz running for reelection.

We've talked about a couple of different ways, which you've had Democrats who are fighting for the chance to be able to take him on.

But the border now shifts, right, without having to defend Joe Manchin in West Virginia.

Now, there's money open available potentially to flow to Texas.

Yep.

What do you think about this prospect?

Is this the case that now you're going to see some national money come to Texas to try to unseat Ted Cruz?

I don't know.

I mean, and that's a quintessential question that I guess someone in the Democratic Party party makes every day.

And once again is if you want to flip a state, if you want to win a statewide election is not by election cycle, but you need to have a five, ten, 15 year plan in order to start working The candidates getting people not only registered but, you know, making them show up to the polls every every single election.

So I think if they're going to put money, it has to be something that is going to be strategic.

Right.

I mean, we saw what happened with Beto O'Rourke, you know, first went great, second one, well, then presidency not so great.

Then the third tried very going.

In the wrong direction.

Yeah.

Like skateboarding downhill.

Yeah, exactly right.

Exactly.

It's hard to skateboard uphill.

Right.

So that's what they're up to because I still think the states flippable I mean, I mean, O'Rourke showed that there are these pockets of potential and if with enough money in the right kind of candidate, you can make it work.

But this is the kind of thing it's going to take a tremendous amount of money and effort on the ground and in the air.

and it needed to happen like yesterday.

So obviously this is better to learn it now than later, but it's still the case that this is troublesome.

But what the Democrats need is for this to be a national race.

And when it becomes a national race, you're talking about national money and that's how O'Rourke was able to get close.

You're running against Ted Cruz, who has sort of high unfavorables.

You've got a candidate who potentially can sort of unify, you know, beyond just the party.

That's what they're looking for.

But that's been really hard to find.

So obviously, you know, there's lots of time between now and then and national Democrats have been burned before.

When it's come to investing in Texas, they put a bunch of money into it and like, yeah.

Because he's the way it is.

Like we're going to start training for a marathon a week before the marathon.

And suddenly he's like, Oh yeah, tomorrow we're going to run 19 miles.

Yeah, without moving a finger.

You know, in the past five years, I mean, no.

You know what?

Let's start the couch to five K at least, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You've got to start someplace.

Exactly.

And Democrats have been making strides, but beating Ted Cruz is going to be a whole of the deal, so.

Right.

We'll see about that.

But let's talk about the other kind of big national issue, and that's the Supreme Court who has been struggling to find a kind of code of conduct, even though other branches of the courts have this code of conduct established.

One, this week has been a lot of pressure on them to do this.

Congress was kind of suggesting that they were going to do it without the courts.

Okay.

This is interesting because it's in the context basically of justices who have been in the news for receiving lavish gifts like Clarence Thomas, accepted luxury hotels and travel from Dallas billionaire here, and Harlan Crow, as well as a bunch of other things, like a purchase of his mother's house and a private school tuition.

And Samuel Alito has ignited scrutiny by doing similar kinds of things.

So Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch have faced criticism over book and property sales.

It was, well, time for this to be on the books.

So what does this mean?

And are these going to be rules that are going to clear up the kind of controversy about the justices and their actions?

I mean, on the one hand, yes, because this just signals, I guess, a reaction because public trust in the court has fallen to levels that we haven't seen in many, many years, maybe.

Ever, actually.

Oh, yeah.

Court's always more popular and than the other branches of government.

Of course.

But then, you know, the court is a nice gesture.

It's an invitation.

It's like, please try not to do all this stuff.

If you do it bad, bad.

Bad, you're going to get a memo.

Yeah, but nothing else, right?

Doesn't have any teeth or anything like that that is going to have significant consequences.

Right.

However, I think that self-policing is going to be important.

And I think that given, you know, how the code is written, justices are going to be paying attention.

And while they're not going to make these mistakes again.

Right.

But leaving them just to human nature, I don't think is a right thing.

I think it should go one step further and have some teeth in order to have teeth after another scandal.

Right.

You see what I'm saying?

So it's not like I just put it right there.

It's better than nothing in a way.

But also, as you say, the real elephant in the room here is the basically that that it is not something that's enforceable.

The the code requires justices to act in a manner that promotes public confidence and integrity in the courts.

It's a little vague, right, to prohibit solicitation of gifts or practicing law in cases where they might have, you know, to effectively come to the court, which could be, you know, any case.

Right.

And it basically prohibits the judges from engaging in political activity, but doesn't define what that means.

So lots of question marks here, right?

I suppose, like I said, it's better than nothing.

But at the same time, it's something you'd like to see more firm and other branches of the court actually have something more firm.

So that's unusual, but we'll see how this plays out and if it becomes an issue.

But obviously policing it themselves has become quite the conundrum and right so effective.

So we will monitor this as it goes, just like we're monitor what's happening in Washington, D.C.

This is Party Politics.

I'm Brandon.

This is Jeronimo.

The big news Jeronimo of the week is that the government's funded.

Yeah.

And you wouldn't think that would make, like, big news that like, we have a budget that, you know, we can agree on or mostly agree on, but that's the reality of things.

So the good news is that the continuing resolutions that have been put into place have saved the Speaker's job for now and have put the government on a path to being funded through January and February, depending on which cycle you're looking at.

The bad news is that it took a lot of friction to get there.

Some of that friction met like almost literally like fighting with each other.

Yeah.

Which we'll talk about in a second.

Talk us through kind of what the continuing resolution means and sort of the big picture for the kind of government going.

So this is a first step.

Well, the first real test of the new minted speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.

Right.

We have to remember that former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was ousted because precisely these very particular issue are.

Literally the exact same issue.

Right.

The exact same issue.

The same deal that.

Now, exactly.

The thing that Johnson is going to like.

So that tells us that he was not in terms of values, but he was more personal rather than, you know, the core of the matter.

But anyway, some people take stuff personal.

Yeah, it's just how it is.

So no, I mean, there was this, for example.

So first of all, it was passed with the help of Democrats.

So it was 209 Democrats and 127 members of the Republican Party.

336 And then you had 95 against 93 Republicans, two Democrats that voted against these continuing resolution.

So obviously, you know, the Freedom Caucus put a press release saying, well, even though we do not agree in principle, this is not good, blah, blah, blah, we're continuing to work with Mike Johnson and thumbs up and everything like that.

So that's all good.

Okay.

What I see reading the tea leaves, right.

Okay.

Situation is, huh?

So does this really show that and you know, I'm I'm optimistic.

Yeah.

The most optimistic person I know.

Yeah that we can really reset this thing forget about these 93 you know naysayers and have this correlation between Democrats and Republicans.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Well, it's an agreement that they already agreed to.

And so in theory, okay, yeah, we can agree to the stuff we already agreed to.

That's a, I guess, good thing that we're consistent.

The bad news is that I think that the honeymoon is over for Johnson.

Like he was able to skate through this in a way that obviously McCarthy was not.

But it definitely has sort of alarm bells for the future.

You had 57% of the caucus, Republican caucus, supporting this.

Right.

That's not a lot and not enough, especially when you're talking about the margins reducing in the following year.

So there's not a lot of room here for Johnson to be able to negotiate.

And if he needs Democrats to be able to partner to work on this and move forward, then it's going to make him just as bad as McCarthy.

So, yep, I think that's the issue.

I mean, I think, you know.

I mean, it's good in general, but it's bad for Johnson, right?

Who as speaker has to be able to navigate all these different kind of wings in his caucus who say we'll never work with Democrats.

And some who say, yeah, let's just get the job done.

But I mean, if you have 209 Democrats ready, willing and able to help.

Right, Right.

And you show results, right?

Well, I think that's true.

But they are willing to help now, but not maybe willing to help later.

And it took some teeth gritting for them to get to the point where they were going to agree to this.

And I think it's not going to be such an easy fight in the first of the year.

So the good news is we'll get to talk about it more than.

Right through.

Bad news is that I think it's going to be more kind of friction because the Democrats are going to insist on something for that process.

Right.

They're going to look for additional funding for Israel.

Additional funding for Ukraine.

White House is going to get involved in this.

The White House, I think, fairly calmly decided that they weren't going to fight this.

They said, okay, let's just kind of let it go.

The Senate more or less, too.

But there's a world in which you're going to see Democrats saying, we want something for all of this.

No, no, no.

True.

And they might win.

Right.

Because, you know, the history of these shutdowns like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, even through Donald Trump, is that when the Democrats are blaming Republicans for the shutdowns, they often win that messaging war.

So if that's the case, then the Democrats recognize they can get something for this instead of just get more or less right, the status quo.

So I think it was just for the holiday so they wouldn't have to.

But I mean, it's.

Thanksgiving.

Let's get together.

Right.

The next next year, we're going to have these fights.

But one of the things that Johnson said, it was very telling Biden and maybe he has become a realist in terms of politics.

He said, you know, I want to cut spending.

I want to include policy writers on and so forth.

But the issue is that we have a three vote majority.

Yeah.

And oops, we did have to like.

The wheels here.

Exactly.

And there's no way that.

Happened fast, right?

Yeah.

He became a realist, like literally within a couple of weeks.

Oh yeah.

But I actually think too again, it's going to be a real tough for the Republican caucus to have to fight through this because you are going to see everybody dig in after the holidays like they're going to be back.

You know, everyone's broken their diets.

They're all in terrible mood.

That's right.

Probably too much wine.

And they're just going to come in a fighting mood.

And that's been the other thing that happened, like literally just this week.

There's been a lot of these fights.

Let me just tick off a couple of these.

Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin read a tweet to Teamster boss Sean O'Brien, basically in which O'Brien suggested that they fight.

Mullin, the Senator Mullin, the senator said, like, let's go right now.

Stand your butt up, which I hope I can say "stand your butt up", "stand your butt up."

Okay, this is literally in the Congressional Record now, right?

Happily, Bernie Sanders, right.

Wearing his referee uniform, said this is not a cage fight.

We have to stop this.

Kevin McCarthy, the ousted speaker, as you mentioned, actually apparently shoved, maybe elbowed, slash, tried to get by one of his colleagues, Tim Burchett, who, by the way, voted against him.

And basically that sort of engaged in this kind of raucous.

McCarthy denied it, saying I just tried to get by you and the hope it was narrow.

Right.

If you seen those scrums right there, like media people trying to get like attention.

Right, right, right.

You know, it can be pretty narrow in those halls, but that turned out to be pretty ugly.

And the House Oversight Committee, Republican chair James Colmer lost his cool with a Democratic colleague.

He called him effectively kind of financially illiterate and so that he looked like a Smurf and he was wearing a blue jacket like you're wearing and like a blue tie.

Are you.

Calling me?

I'm calling you Smurf.

But you know what?

You want to go.

You got to go.

There's so many Smurfs, though.

Like, some Smurfs are like, Really?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

They're smart.

Yeah.

Brainy Smurf.

and Doctor Smurf.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, like, I take it as a compliment, I guess.

Anyway, what are, what does all this fighting mean?

Are people just exhausted?

Like, and is or is there something more deep here about political violence on the right?

Oh, I think it's, you know, it's both right.

I think that people are, you know, basically, you know, on on their own on their own, I guess universe.

Right.

Right.

And that has very important implications in terms of how you communicate with other people.

And we're going to talk about this more in next week's episode.

But it's just, you know, I don't want to give it away.

Yeah, but, you know, it's just indicative of where we are as a nation and where we are in terms of the political process.

And and politics is the art of negotiation.

And it's the art of, you know, extracting something and getting, you know, in return something else.

And nowadays.

It's a MMA fight.

It's a MMA fight, right?

Like Fight Club every week.

Sure.

Hopefully we can.

Avoid I mean, I know that's going to be the case.

You know, put some rules.

Yeah, some rules.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well no holds bar is my preferred way to fight these out so that politics can be pretty bloody.

Yeah, obviously that's true for DC and true for Texas.

Let's talk about some retirements.

This has been the kind of theme of the last couple of, frankly, cycles, but we have some additional data points here.

So Michael Burgess, who's a member from North Texas, is not seeking another term in the U.S. House.

Senator State Senator Drew Springer is saying he's not going to run for reelection.

State House member Jeannie Morrison is announcing she's leaving.

So we've got a lot of this happening.

I crunched some numbers here.

I want to get your perspective on this.

30 of the 38 members in Texas have been elected since 2013, 22 of them, that is 57% were elected since 2019 and 16 of those are Republican.

So you've got a real hollowing out of the kind of sort of information about government and how to work things.

So by the time the 2025 election comes up, the average tenure for a member of Congress in Texas will be eight years.

That is a tremendous low number.

And the longest serving members were Jackson Lee, who's probably going to leave.

We don't know yet exactly Granger, who announced last week she was leaving, and Burgess That's a tremendous drop.

What do you think this means for Texas?

Well, it means that, you know, Texas is the location is going to start losing.

You know, that important prestige, because as you know, in Congress, everything is about time.

It doesn't really matter.

Yeah, seniority doesn't really matter.

If you did or didn't do is about how many years you stay there.

Yeah.

So Texas is going to start losing.

Well, it's already losing a lot of of leadership positions, right?

Yeah.

And you know, given the number, it's a very important delegation.

Right.

But also important delegation means that they need this seniority in terms of how to negotiate with other members of Congress, but also within the conference or, you know, the Democratic caucus.

Yeah.

So it's not good.

It's not good.

Yeah.

And that's a continuing trend, which is troublesome.

Let's shift gears and talk a little about Harris County.

And there's been some infighting here as well.

Happily, it hasn't come to blows, but Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo announced an endorsement of Sean Teare for district attorney.

This is odd because there's a sitting Democratic district attorney.

Right.

But they're fighting because the judge has implied that the district attorney effectively is using her office for political gains.

She's accusing her of dirty politics.

The district attorney claps back and says this is basically just an attempt to shape that.

The beef is strong here.

But I think the issue is that, you know, there's an election.

Obviously, it's going to be a primary where the D.A.

is going to have to face a challenger from the left, more or less.

She survived the challenges before.

But as a tough on crime issue, it's possible she can use this to her advantage.

Right.

So the voters who typically are in these primaries are going to be sort of, if they care about crime, probably more moderate and you might see some crossover vote and Republicans may say, we like what Kim Ogg is doing.

And so they may choose to strategically vote in the Democratic primary.

And so the Republican primary, we'll see.

What do you think's going to happen?

Well, I mean, it's going to be very interesting.

And here comes all the dynamics around these dynamics are going to be in terms of the primary election.

I think that that's what's going to be the most, most, most important issue, and that is the pressure that grows over election.

But again, if that happens, then, you know, Republican voters that transfer to the Democrat voter, then that means that they cannot vote for the Republican primary election in a couple of years.

So it's not very clear what's going to happen, but this is going to be one of the other issues that we're going to continue talking as we come back in the next couple weeks.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.