Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. The top two headlines when I went to The Times website this morning were no signs of red wave that Republicans expected. Trump hoped for a celebration, but did not have much to cheer. Then there's the news analysis from New York Times political reporter, Lisa Lerer, no relation, different spelling. Her article is called How a GOP Wave Became a Ripple. The conditions seemed right for Republicans to make big midterm pickups. Voters had other ideas is the subhead, and she joins us now.

Lisa, thanks for coming on after a late night of following returns. Welcome back to WNYC. Do we have Lisa?

Lisa Lerer: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: There we go. Now we got you--

Lisa Lerer: All Right. It's a late night.

Brian Lehrer: And an early morning. Listeners, we can take your questions or comments about the national election results now at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. If you're hanging on to talk about Kathy Hochul's victory or the Congressional races in New York, or to be another person who rails against the court that imposed the redistricting in New York that favored Republicans for Congress, we're done with that for now.

We can take your questions or comments on the national election results at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. First, Lisa, what's the latest on how much of a red ripple there is? Specifically, what's the latest on which party will control the house?

Lisa Lerer: Well, we don't know yet. After last night, I think everyone is really hesitant to make predictions, but it seems like-- the jury's still out on the House. It seems like it's definitely still possible that Republicans take control but it's going to be a much tighter margin than anyone expected. I think last time I was on your show, we were talking about 25, 30 seats that would flip. If Republicans win the House, if they end up taking control, we're talking much, much tighter. They need five seats and maybe just around that.

Brian Lehrer: As you remind us in your piece, in Bill Clinton's first midterm election as president, the Republicans picked up 54 house seats and took the majority in Barack Obama's first midterm. In 2010, the Republicans picked up 64 seats. Why did that go like that a majority of time? Is America such a country of malcontents? Of course it happened in 2018 too with Trump's first midterm as president where there was this huge blue wave.

Are we such a country of malcontents that we rarely see the officials we just elected in our democracy as doing a good job?

Lisa Lerer: Yes. I think we are a country of malcontents, actually. President Biden really defied history here. That has to be admitted. I think voters wanted to give him a little bit of a check. They want to divide government. Traditionally midterms or referendums on the president. That's the normal politics of this thing. What we really saw was that Democrats were able to successfully turn it from a referendum into a choice between what they had done and granted, it perhaps was not totally what voters wanted.

Their voters are unhappy with the economy, they are unhappy with inflation, they are worried about public safety. Democrats turned into a choice between what they had done and a Republican party that they positioned as very extreme and out of the mainstream. That really transformed the outcome here.

Brian Lehrer: You're right that America leaves these midterms much as we entered them. How would you describe that?

Lisa Lerer: Closely divided and malcontented as you put out, as you said. I do think that in a really tightly divided country like we have right now, you just maybe don't see these huge swings anymore.

Maybe 2018 was more of an aberration than we thought it was, even though in this new era of post-Trump administration politics or Trump administration politics, in that it was such a strong reaction to Trump who is such a polarizing figure, but placed particularly poorly with suburban moderates, which have really emerged as a key demographic in all our politics. Maybe what we're seeing now is something where the country is really closely divided and you just don't have these huge wave elections-

Brian Lehrer: You wrote-

Lisa Lerer: -because one side essentially blocks the other. The passions of one side essentially block the other.

Brian Lehrer: Right. You wrote, "It's a country that wants divided government, but is unwilling to turn fully to the divisive grievance driven politics promoted by Trump." How much of a country, does it look to you, did turn to Trump's style grievance politics based on this election? What does either party learn from this?

Lisa Lerer: Well, there's certainly a couple bright spots for Republicans. Here in New York, they won some seats. They came closer than people would expect in a state that's as blue as ours. Florida, of course, was another really bright spot for Republicans. Not only did Ron DeSantis win by very large margins, he transformed places in that state that had been typically democratic: Miami-Dade County, Palm Beach County, into Republican places. People changed how they had traditionally voted there, so that's a big win for Republicans.

It's one that tells us two things. One, that Florida has become a fairly red state. Perhaps it's no longer the swing state that we all think about it as being from history, and from that 2000 election. Also that Ron DeSantis certainly has a mantle that he can claim if he wants-- which seems like he'll want, as a leader, if not the leader of that party.

This really puts into question, although we'll have to see how this plays out, whether for the first time in a long time, whether Donald Trump's hold on the party is as unbreakable as I think some Republicans thought it would. There I'd like to draw a distinction. I'm talking about former President Trump as a figure not Trumpism, which I think is still the main focus of that party.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a caller from Easton, Pennsylvania on Fetterman's win over Oz in that state. Larry in Easton, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Larry: What I wanted to talk about with Fetterman's campaign that hasn't been mentioned is he had really terrific attack ads against had Oz. Had where they had a snake crawling across an image of Oz, which I guess is a reference to us being a snake oil salesman, and it was really effective. Hopefully, Democrats maybe have learned a lesson that when they go low, you go high, really isn't effective anymore and they'll just take the gloves off in future elections.

Brian Lehrer: Larry, thank you very much. The old Michelle Obama line, "When they go low," which she said with reference to Trump, "we go high," but they lost that election in 2016 in which she first made that comment. What do you think about that? Were you aware of that particular imagery? I hadn't personally heard that before, using a snake over a picture of Dr. Oz or some reference to Oz indicating he's a snake oil salesman.

Lisa Lerer: Well, I wasn't aware of that particular imagery, but I had covered that race some, and I actually was in Philadelphia the weekend before on Saturday, so right before election day because Obama and Biden had a big rally there on behalf of Fetterman and their gubernatorial candidate, Josh Shapiro, who also won. I'm happy that Larry brought that up because I think it is a really interesting race to talk about. It's somewhere we have results.

We're waiting. A lot of these senate races are tight or out West and we just don't know how they're going to play out yet. I think it's a really good example of part of what we saw last night, which is that candidates with defined brands were able to overcome Biden's low approval rating. Pennsylvania actually is a state of all the swing states where President Biden didn't pull as low as he did some other places.

I think he was right around or just a little below the national average. He was much lower in-- he was in the 30s really in Georgia and Arizona and other places. In Pennsylvania, he was in the low forties, which was just about where he is nationally. Still, Fetterman ended up-- when I checked last night, and I'm sure the numbers have changed as of this morning, surpassing Biden's rating by I think eight or even nine points. I think that's because he is someone who has a really defined brand in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania voters know him. They know him as this champion for blue collar workers as the former mayor of Braddock, which is this struggling former manufacturing town in Western Pennsylvania. Because voters knew him, even though he had the stroke, that put him out of commission and put him basically for several months and took him off the campaign trail and also placed him in the position of having this very public recovery as he campaigned.

He was able to win in that state, not only beating out his opponent, Dr. Oz, but also essentially out outplaying Biden, outpacing Biden.

Brian Lehrer: You said that Trump may have been marginalized by these results, but not Trumpism, but let me ask you how much you think that's really true, because Trumpist JD Vance did win an Ohio Senate seat, but Trumpists Don Bolduc in New Hampshire lost, Oz lost, Doug Mastriano for governor in Pennsylvania, he lost too.

We don't yet know about Herschel Walker in Georgia or Arizona, Kari Lake for Governor, Masters for Senate, all Trumpists, but there are more losses than victories from what I see, at least in these marquee Trumpy kinds of races. How much do we want to draw any conclusion yet?

Lisa Lerer: I was wondering, Brian, if you might interrogate that. [laughs] That [unintelligible 00:10:55] that would come back to haunt me. It's a good point. It is a mixed bag and we don't know what's going to happen, and you're right. Some Trump-endorsed candidates won, some Trump-endorsed candidates lost, and the jury's still out at the bulk of them. There's a number of House races that we saw, New Hampshire, there was one, Michigan, there was another.

I believe there may have been one in Virginia where Trump-endorsed candidates, candidates that really defeated other Republican candidates who might have been more moderate or more establishment in their primaries because of Trump's backing, lost against more moderate democratic candidates. We don't know, the jury is still out, and of course, Trump himself has said that he plans to announce his presidential bid next week.

We'll see if that holds, but he's not going to really be eager to relinquish his holds on the party, but I do think that there's been a number of Republicans who have wanted to turn the page from Trump as their party leader for a very, very long time, probably almost since before he was elected in 2016. The people who are most vocal about that have been defeated in their party or retired, but I'm thinking of people like Liz Cheney or, or Jeff Flake, who is the senator from Arizona.

I do think there is this push to move past Trump because he is such a polarizing figure and he has cost the party so much in these key suburban swing districts that now perhaps, and we have to see, there may be more momentum to doing for Republicans to do. We also know from polling that there is a fair segment, no, maybe a majority, we don't really have the polling post these elections yet that could tell us that with any sure definition, but there definitely is a segment of the Republican Party who likes Donald Trump, likes what he stands for, but would really like to see someone new run for president in '24. We'll also have to see how this all plays out in the coming weeks and months.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call. Here is Sunny in Vanderwagen, New Mexico. Sunny, you're on WYC with Lisa Lerer, different spelling, no relation, New York Times political analyst. Hi, Sunny.

Sunny: Good morning, Brian Lehrer. I'm so happy to talk with you. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you just fine. Better than a lot of our callers from Brooklyn. Hi there.

Sunny: [laughs] Hi there. Well, I'm Navajo. I'm a Diné woman, and last night, the Navajo Nation elected a new president who is hoping to transform our nation. The Navajo Nation and the state of New Mexico stayed blue in its governorship. Some of the races are-- I haven't really looked into the details of the most contentious one. For 44 years-- I'm not 44, but I started voting at 18 because my dad always said, "If you don't vote, you can't complain. You just have to sit in the back of the pickup truck."

That was a real powerful statement, so I've been voting since I was 18, and that's 44 years. Then I vote always absentee because it's just more peaceful. As soon as those absentee voting polls open, that's when I vote. I don't get lost in the mishmash of all the crazy political ads because I just think that's absolutely stupid and just stupid period. I'm a Navajo person. My people weren't given citizenship until like 1924, but we really didn't know about it till 1953. It's just important to vote.

It's just such a privilege and a way in which we can voice our opinions and not be sitting in the back of the pickup truck, but be part of helping drive this country to better aspirations of being our best selves.

Brian Lehrer: Sunny, there's-

Sunny: That's all I wanted to say.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask a couple of follow-ups if you're okay with that.

Sunny: Okay.

Brian Lehrer: One is there seems to be more of a focus in recent years in this country at large on even the existence, not to mention the historical plight of indigenous people in the United States. We now call what was Columbus Day Indigenous People's Day, at least in addition. I think people on recent Thanksgivings, and it'll happen again this year, no matter who they are in the US are more likely to have a more rounded conversation about American history than maybe a little while ago.

Do you think something is changing for the better in this country in terms of Indigenous rights and Indigenous fortunes going forward?

Sunny: I do because I believe indigenous people all over the world hold the key to transformation in terms of understanding climates. In order for us to survive this only planet that we have, Indigenous wisdom has to prevail because everything else that has been asserted in trying to control or dominate has not succeeded, and you just have to look to the plant world.

The more diverse our natural environment is, the more chances we have to survive, and so the more diverse ideas we have and the way in which we are compatible with one another, that's our chance to survive.

Brian Lehrer: Sunny, thank you so much for your call. We really, really appreciate it. Lisa from the New York Times, you know what I want to pick up from her call with you, the fact that she always votes absentee. I think there's a lot of that in her state of New Mexico, but of course, this has been one of the battlegrounds for election deniers and other Republicans too, trying to minimize the amount of mail-in voting that's even allowed from state to state.

Certainly, for anybody who watched the returns on the networks last night, we saw how the mail-in ballots from just about everywhere skewed much more democratic and the day of and in-person votes skewed much more Republican. The early votes even in person tend to skew more democratic, so Republicans are really trying to plant themselves and plant their parties flag on election day itself in-person voting.

We really saw it in the disparity between mail and votes and the in-person vote on election day. Where are we going with this?

Lisa Lerer: Well, look, I think definitely we saw a big expansion of early voting and vote by mail during COVID, and people like it. They like having more flexibility with when they can cast their ballots. They like being able to do it when they don't have to be at work or when they have childcare. I don't think that's something that's going away, and it was part of the reason that there was uncertainty around the outcome of those who were being really honest and not just strategists paid to make predictions.

I think there was a sense that, going into this election, we knew that Democrats had voted in very high numbers early, but what we didn't know was whether Republicans would turn out on election day and overcome what seemed like that early democratic advantage. Part of the reason we didn't know that was because as you point out, a lot of Republican candidates had followed Donald Trump's lead.

He's been a skeptic and a critic really of vote by mail for years at this point and encouraged their people to come out on election day. It is a risky strategy. What if the weather's bad? You're likely to have lower turnout. What if something happens and they lose power in a neighborhood? People may be less likely to come out and vote. We may be seeing some of the riskiness of that strategy in these election results, but I think it is why, along with questions about polling, there's part of the reason why at least there's so much more uncertainty in how these elections are going to go.

Brian Lehrer: By the way the caller who brought up John Fetterman's cheeky campaigning against Dr. Oz, someone wrote another example. Fetterman tried to get Oz inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame because, of course, an issue was that Oz really lives in New Jersey and only established a residence in Pennsylvania to run for the Senate and Fetterman paid a few thousand dollars for a plane to fly with a banner over the Jersey Shore also welcoming Dr. Oz.

A few more examples of the Fetterman campaign which was effective. One more call. Daniel in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Daniel.

Daniel: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call and thank you for the invaluable work that you do not just during election season, but all year long.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Daniel: I am wondering, I'm a proud Democrat and I'm also a democrat in the sense that I'm very passionate about American democracy and the continuation of free and fair elections in this country. On the one hand, I'm a bit relieved this morning to see that the red wave was in fact more of a red ripple but on the other hand, I'm still wondering even if the GOP comes away with a very slim majority in the House, say two or three seats or something like that, would they still be in a position if they so choose to sabotage the next presidential election as there have been some rumblings that they might attempt to do with elector slates and things of that nature?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that's a great question. Related to it, Lisa, and I know you got to go in a minute, I've also been wondering if with even a very slim majority in the House, if you expect an investigation and impeachment regime to begin as they go for payback for Trump being twice impeached plus the Russia investigation. To that question and the caller's question, what would you forecast?

Lisa Lerer: Well, I think actually a slimmer majority in the House makes it more difficult, of course, for whoever ends up leading that caucus. It seemed like Kevin McCarthy was positioned to do that. We'll have to see whether the perhaps smaller than expected Republican victory, assuming they do get control of the House, changes those political dynamics. It very well may.

What it means is if Republicans have a governing majority there, it's a really slim one and it gives them less wiggle room because they need all their votes and that means that they're going to have to capture the votes of some of the further right Trumpy members of their caucus, that they're going to have to do things that keep those Marjorie Taylor Greene wing people in the fold.

That really makes it a really difficult political dynamic for them because what we think we know from these early results is that that wing of the party, those positions are not broadly popular with the kinds of independent voters who tend to decide our elections. It definitely puts them in much more of a political bind than had they won with a bigger majority and had really more wiggle room in terms of the votes they needed. They could essentially lose more members in the House than they may be able to when this is all said and done.

Brian Lehrer: One last comment from a listener via Twitter. "Biden didn't sweep in a House majority in 2020 because the vote was really," again, I'm reading it in a confusing way. I think it was written in a confusing way, but the point of this listener's tweet is Biden lost seats in 2020. The Democrats, even as Biden was winning the presidency, lost seats in 2020 so there wasn't much of the House for Democrats to lose this year. Any quick thought on that? Just like 15, 20 seconds?

Lisa Lerer: Yes, I think the map really matters. I think one thing we'll see in 2024 if we want to think about that before we already have finished this one out-- it's scary to think that far out I think, is that the Senate map gets much tougher for Democrats. They have a lot of seats that they're trying to keep in the Senate and they have some seats in some fairly red and purple terrain.

Yes, the shape of the map and how they do in the election before really impacts the next race. That's part of the reason Democrats were so worried about having deep, deep losses in the House is it just makes it harder to claw back.

Brian Lehrer: Lisa Lerer, different spelling, no relation, New York Times political analyst. Thank you for joining us today. I'm sure it was a late night and you stayed up late, late, late to do this with us. Thank you.

Lisa Lerer: Thank you. I appreciate it.

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