Midterms: Historic firsts across the country

And I could have never imagined going from homeless to being a doctor, let alone that I would be standing here the next governor of Ohio. They might have been pointing to my name and my faith, but we all know that my name and my faith aren't the reason you can't afford your gas, not the reason you can't afford your groceries. We want a leader who will put Georgia first. And who will stand up to all the chaos coming out of Washington, D.C. From the first Muslim U.S. senator to the first Native American woman elected to the Senate and the first gay male senator, at least openly, this midterm election is making history on multiple fronts. Women also breaking through some of the highest barriers as Democratic governors flipping red states. That's not all. There's also a historic breakthrough for Latino representation as well. To expand on the people and the first making history, we welcome David McKeelan, political science professor at Sonoma State University. My goodness, so we have all that. We also had, we did have, Florida does have a first black governor. He is a member, he's a Republican. Byron Donalds, I covered him a lot when I was in Florida. He was, you know, I was based in Naples as a reporter there, so when he was in the state assembly. So now to see him elevated to that first black governor in Florida, but to also see first black female governor, you know, in Georgia. And to see. All these other firsts here, tell us, David, what do you make of this coming at this particular time in the country? All right, so this is the mother of all midterms. It's the mother of all midterms, not just because of the historic nature, but what happened headed into the midterms. How Trump... The president personalized this about himself. Now he's got to walk away from that. You have this historic set of candidates. You have this civil war in the Democratic Party. How do they rectify this? You're talking about with the DSA? With the DSA. But if you look at the midterm overall, the most expensive midterm, 50% higher than we saw four years ago, and the most diverse midterm, what that sets up is the most expensive and most diverse presidential election season for 27 into 28. That's where we're headed. And that's why last night was historic. It's impact on our politics runs a few years. Can we talk about faith? Because Tallarico, seminary student, and then you go up into Kansas, and the candidate that won there also runs the biggest church in Kansas. Do you think people are looking for a more calmer America? Yeah, it's not only just a calmer America, but it's for the Democrats. A party of old that embrace faith and the importance of faith, but also tolerates, if you will, other faiths and those that have no faith. So you have run everywhere from those that are pushing back against Christian nationalism, but those that also practice regardless of what that faith looks like. Having that big tent, that is a challenge for the party and the unifier and the message of that about tolerance, about understanding. Calmness, you talked about, but a different type of America that's not in your face and not as confrontational. Typically, elections lose that element. They emphasize that difference and that distinction. But now it's about bringing people together and what that looks like. That's governance. That's hard. And it's especially hard at the local level or at the state level. So let's see how this trickles down, because Democrats didn't just have a good night nationally. They had a good night sub-nationally, regionally, and throughout the country. They did, and very close races. I mentioned the Florida race for governor. That was very close. The race down in Miami-Dade County for Congress was also very close, which would have been also a pretty major move. Elliott Rodriguez losing slightly to the Republican in that race. In Florida 9, Daniel Soto. Right. Osceola County doing very well. A flip, a county that Trump had flipped in 20 and 24 now back to Democrats. I wanted to talk a little bit about, first of all, J.D. Vance just commented a short time ago. He blames the war in Iran for Republican losing midterms elections here. I'm going to stop here. What do you think? We have to fund the Defense Department here over the next several weeks. So what do you think will happen? They're just going to give the Defense Department. All the money that they need at this moment before The new Congress takes effect in January? They're certainly going to try because they're going to need to do that because they won't have the votes. They won't have the votes for any replacements in the cabinet, for ambassadors. They won't have votes for any Supreme Court justice. I mean, there's some consequences to this that run pretty quickly. And so, therefore, the lame duck becomes a real big wild card. Another effect of this mother of all midterms because you've got to fund the Defense Department. What does that look like when you're also prosecuting a war in Iran? I'm curious if you, some of these big changes, do you see some presidential fodder out there? I know the former Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first black governor of the state of Georgia in the Deep South, she was very popular in Atlanta during the pandemic and did a very good job. Do you see aspirations beyond? Well, there could be aspirations for John Ossoff. He'll be on the short list. Let's Rafael Warnock has kind of... We've kind of gone back and forth about this, but what this points to is how key Georgia is for 2028 and what happens there. But also, look, the saying goes that every senator who looks in the mirror sees a future president of the United States. So certainly the field has expanded, but a lot of these folks are single-digit candidates. Not a plurality of candidates. Someone like AOC can get a plurality of the votes. She may not be able to win because of DSA and she's too far left nationally, but she's someplace where she gets 12 to 14, 14 to 15 percent. Gavin Newsom gets the double digits. Rahm's in the middle there. What happens to everybody else and how does this consolidation take place? You've got to set forth your presidential exploratory committee paperwork and have that done by the first quarter. So you're raising money. So we're really out of the gate while all those senators are looking in the mirror I'd like to be president. I want to jump back to the first, you know, piggybacking off something that Frank just mentioned a moment ago, and that is in Texas because something pretty dramatic also happened there in the governor's race as well. We have Greg Abbott who, you know, they've elected their first female. Governor of Mexican descent, Hispanic descent, in Texas, a Democrat, which is a major, I mean, this is a lone star state, for goodness sakes, and now that has changed as well. You know, you mentioned earlier about, we talked earlier about faith and the differences are emphasized, but this race really came down to all the similarities all Americans have in common. Yeah, it's more about what we have, our commonplace, that the differences that get exacerbated in an election or exaggerated, separate us, are actually much closer. Right, for building things like that, living your life. A number of things, in terms of tolerance, in terms of understanding. Elections divide that component, or if you really kind of accentuate that, but that's not who we are. Right. And so what you see is an adjustment here. You look in Texas, Democrats did well. Down ballot in Texas. There's a number of statewide offices and local offices where Democrats did well, and they were talking about faith, and they were taking a page from Tallarico. They weren't simply moving to a place of being, I don't know, commie college professors or this kind of crazy liberalism. And that has to work in each different district because the locals know what's going on. So the candidates have to fit. You have to have that space. The godmother of American politics, Nancy Pelosi, knew that. Whatever fits that district, you run that way. You vote that way. That tolerance of a Big Tent is a challenge for governance, however. Let's see how Hakeem and his leadership team pull that off. When does that happen? That kind of, they're going to be making moves right away. Will he become the speaker? He'll become the speaker. And then what really matters is what happens for that leadership team. Pete Aguilar, for example, in Southern California. Pete becomes a major player for not just California, but as that bridge between Javier Becerra, who's going to play a role as kind of the antithesis of Trump here on the West Coast. Pete plays that role for that bridge into Washington, D.C., developing that leadership team. This is a very interesting kind of development, not just for California, but a generational change for Democrats, which provides an opening for someone like, for example, Gavin Newsom. House leadership. We talked about Hakeem Jeffries. Let's talk about Senate leadership, because right now Chuck Schumer, he might face an uphill battle, Considering the difference of the Democrats that are coming in to The Senate come January, right? Yeah, and Chuck Schumer folded on a couple of key votes earlier this year. And there is that generational change. One thing that has happened. from yesterday to today is congress got younger yeah yeah and in congress getting younger that includes not just the house but also the senate and that diversity the most diverse election the most diverse electorate the most diverse set of candidates who are elected and that also is that diversity includes age and the divide of under 40 and over 40 is dramatic when we look at prop 40 and wealth taxes when we look at a bunch of issues and that's an important development mediating And one of the sub-discussions that were happening was a lot of the folks that have been in Congress have failed to act over the years. And so this new generation coming in. Action-oriented. Yes, action-oriented here. So we'll see what happens with Chuck Schumer and some of the folks that have been around for a long period of time of what the new incoming generation does. If they can navigate. The one thing that's interesting is like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, they know how to navigate. There's a way you have to navigate working in Congress with all of the different people. And this may not work for the viewers, but this is like an extended March Madness. That's where we're at. It is nuts. You're like North Carolina. We're giving up. But it affects you. Unlike the North Carolina, the Valkyries game, this actually affects your pocketbook. It really does. It keeps moving forward, and that's very exciting because it's relevant. Let's see how the parties adjust to this. All right. David McKeown. Thank you, David. Thank you.