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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. There's a famous moment in New York City history. It happened to be about baseball, but that's beside the point. It was the last game of the season in 1951 when either the Brooklyn Dodgers or the New York Giants would go to the World Series. The game ends when a Giants player named Bobby Thomson hits a home run that became known as the shot heard Round the World. The Excited Giants radio announcer, a guy named Russell Hodges, starts shouting and repeating, "The giants win the pennant, The giants win the pennant."

Russell Hodges: The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant. The Giants win the pennant.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, like that. Well, that's what happened with some Democrats on Saturday night when the word came down that the Nevada Senate race had been called for Catherine Cortez Masto, which meant the Democrats retain their United States Senate majority. Some Democrats I know started calling and texting each other to say, the Democrats won the Senate. The Democrats won the Senate. There it was after nine o'clock on Saturday night, when not that many people are thinking about politics, but words started getting out and Democrats were texting and tweeting and calling each other. The Democrats win the Senate. The Democrats win the Senate.

Russell Hodges: The Giants win the pennant.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, like that, but all the cheering was disaggregated on social media. If they were watching one of the Democrats' favorite TV channels, MSNBC, they saw it happen in real-time. Their elections analyst, Steve Sisolak was talking about the state of the Nevada race when all of a sudden--

Steve Sisolak: There it is. That's the checkmark [crosstalk] after Cortez Masto declared by our decision desk, the winner of the Nevada Senate race. With Catherine Cortez Masto's victory and the Nevada Senate race, Democrats now have control of the United States Senate insured. They have their 50 seats with Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote that guarantees Democratic control of the Senate for the next two years.

Brian Lehrer: There it was. In a midterm election that was supposed to favor the party out of power, the Democrats kept control and may even add one seat compared to before, depending on how the Georgia runoff comes out on December 6th. Let's talk about it with Time Magazine, political correspondent, National Politics correspondent Molly Ball. Hi, Molly, Thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Molly Ball: Hi, Brian. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, are you a Democrat who started calling or texting or tweeting people on Saturday night? "The Democrats win the Senate, The Democrats win the--" How did that go for you or any questions or comments from any side of the aisle from Molly Ball, from Time, 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Molly can restart with Nevada in particular. Then we'll go on to what might happen in the Senate as a result of these elections. How did Katherine Cortez Masto hang onto her seat in a year when the Republicans were trying hard to win over Latinos in the big Las Vegas area and had a shot at flipping that seat?

Molly Ball: Yes, I was a reporter in Nevada myself for several years and went out there to cover this race. It was really a microcosm of all of the national forces that I think we saw at play across the map that brought us to this scenario where, as you said, the Democrats kept the Senate and could even add to their number of seats depending on how Georgia goes. Out in Nevada, there's a lot of economic hardship. People, voters clearly do not feel like things are going well. They've soured on President Biden despite him having won the state a couple of years ago.

As you said, Republicans made it a very strong effort to target the large Latino population. We don't know exactly what role they played in this election yet but estimated to be about 20% of the vote. Katherine Cortez Masto herself is the first Latina, only Latina in the Senate. She was facing some real headwinds, but she had a few things going for her.

Number one, that ability to personally appeal to Hispanics, I think was important in the ground game that was backing her up, the so-called Reid Machine created by the late Senate majority leader Harry Reid, that has continued to give the Democrats a strong infrastructure in Nevada. Number two, the abortion issue. She emphasized that a lot. She also talked a lot about democracy in January 6th.

Her opponent was an election denier who had really spearheaded Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election in the state. She emphasized that very hard. I think that was the third thing really going in her favor was her opponent. Her opponent, Adam Laxalt, also a former Nevada Attorney General, was a hard right Trumpist candidate, not a moderate, like many successful Nevada Republicans have been over the years.

He did not really try to move to the center. Both candidates refused to debate. I think, as we saw in so many races across the map, voters were ready to hypothetically elect a Republican, but not this Republican. They looked at their choices in this election and said, "This guy's just too far out there for me, and I'm going to stick with the status well."

Brian Lehrer: Earlier in the weekend, Democratic senator Mark Kelly had been declared the winner in his very close reelection battle against a very Trumpy election denier named Blake Masters, then Cortez Mato held her seat in Nevada against Adam Laxalt, who, as you say, had also embraced the big lie. Nevada and Arizona, two of the ultimate swing states in America right now, and two of the states where the big lie crowd had most focused their accusations.

You say it was partly about that and maybe some additional evidence that it was meaningfully about that. Is that on the same day, I think just hours earlier on Saturday, the governor's race in Nevada was called for the Republican, and also the race for Secretary of State there went to a Democrat over an election denier who would've been the administrator of the state's future elections in the role of Secretary of State. People really seemed to split their ballots at least in Nevada and the election denial, big lie democracy aspect seemed key.

Molly Ball: That's right. I think you see that in Arizona too. Nevada and Arizona both had election deniers running for Secretary of State and the candidate in Nevada, Jim Marchant, was the ring leader of this national group of Republican Secretary of State candidates whose whole proposition to the electorate was, I'm going to steal elections more or less. I'm going to run these elections in a way that makes it impossible for Republicans to lose more or less.

Voters really don't like the idea of politicians taking democracy out of their hands, taking their right to vote and choose their own leaders away from them. We see, as you said, this ticket splitting going on, this attention being paid to these normally quite sleepy Secretary of State races where voters really noticed what the candidates were talking about in these races that had to do with election administration. In Arizona too, we have that senate race has already been called.

The Secretary of State's race has been called, the Governor's race still hanging by a thread between Katie Hobbs and Kari Lake, and whichever way that goes, that is further evidence of ticket-splitting because obviously a lot of voters voted for Mark Kelly who then may have already also voted for Kari Lake, and that's why that race continues to be close.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Though Kari Lake is such a big election denier that it would go against the trend. It would be an exception to the trend if she were to win. Do you see any election denialism about to rear its head about the Arizona or Nevada Senate results? It doesn't seem to be happening around the country where Republicans lose, but I see Blake Masters says he won't concede lest I saw and will wait until all the votes are counted, but even that is still within the realm of hardball normal if he doesn't start making stuff up.

Molly Ball: That's right. What we've seen across the country is that these candidates are conceding and things are going in orderly, normal fashion. Even Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania has admitted he lost the election. Broadly across the board, almost all of these candidates are conceding the elections that they've lost. As you say Kari Lake is a leading proponent of the stolen election claim and that race is extremely close. There were some issues on election day with the administration of it. We'll see if that turns into some debacle. I think, what we saw even with Trump was that these are very hard claims to make if you don't have very strong public backing behind you to give you that megaphone. You can claim you won an election you lost all you want, but if nobody cares, it doesn't matter. I think democracy won in the larger sense not just because  voters rejected anti-democratic candidates but because the workings of democracy seem to be a lot healthier than I think a lot of people have had feared.

Brian Lehrer: Molly Ball, National Political correspondent for Time with us. We'll get to a couple of phone calls at 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692, or Tweet @BrianLehrer but let's turn now to the Senate itself. Does Schumer get any credit for holding the Senate? Does McConnell get any blame?

Molly Ball: Yes and yes. I think we're seeing that already. I think certainly there had not even prior to this even when Democrats thought they might lose the Senate, there hadn't really been any rumblings within the Senate Democratic Caucus against Leader Schumer. He obviously won his re-election quite easily. There were some tough results as I'm sure you've talked about in New York for the Democrats that have caused a lot of recriminations in state democratic politics.

I think in the broader sense, Schumer obviously put up with a lot of drama from this 50-50 Senate. Things looked good at first with the passage of the American Rescue Plan and then there was about a year-long stretch where all they did was fight and couldn't get Build Back Better over the line. Then this year it started to turn around and there were a number of bipartisan bills passed through the Senate.

I think that gives Democrats a lot of hope that they can continue to get things done. Although it depends a lot on what's going to happen in the house and we obviously still don't know. In the Senate caucus, it has been quite remarkable to see because we so rarely have seen any dissent expressed against Mitch McConnell.

Trump has been agitating against him for years now, calling him names, urging Republicans to go against him and it really hasn't happened until now. Losing really makes people think hard about these things. We now know that we had seen Rick Scott, the head of the Republican Senate Committee, and McConnell feuding all through this cycle over campaign strategy. Scott now has dropped his potential challenge to McConnell.

You do have a number of Republican senators in the Trumpists wing asking to delay leadership elections until we know the final vote count in the Senate saying if Herschel Walker wins that election in Georgia, he should be able to vote in this election instead of having it held this week which obviously would mean he could not. I think there's going to be some interesting turmoil within that caucus. It pales in comparison to what's happening among the House Republicans right now. I do think that you see some rumblings against McConnell in an interesting way.

Brian Lehrer: I used an old baseball moment analogy to compare it to Saturday night when the Senate was called for the Democrats. I think Elliot in Manhattanville has an old movie analogy. Elliot, you're on WNYC. Hello?

Elliot: I do. Thank you, Brian. Yes, the movie analogy about a cultural icon which you and Molly Ball are both cultural icons yourself. In the film The Godfather, there is a scene in which you can clearly hear Russ Hodge's broadcast of that game playing on a car radio. It's not the famous line, it's somewhere else in the game. The scene was filmed in a district on Long Island that is now flipped to the Republicans. The actor who is killed in the scene, whose character is killed is James Caan, who in 2016 came out for Donald Trump.

Brian Lehrer: I thought my metaphor was tortured.

Elliot: I'm not clearing that there's anything straightforward about this, but people will read into it what they will.

Brian Lehrer: Elliot, thank you very much.

Molly Ball: It's a great movie anyway.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Certainly, yes. I know they were playing a Godfather marathon on AMC on Saturday night. Molly, to pick up on what you were saying a minute ago, if McConnell turns out to be out as minority leader or if he has to fight to retain that position, who compete for that role and with what agendas for change to try to win the next time, if that's clear at all at this early stage.

Molly Ball: It's not clear at this early stage. As I mentioned Senator Rick Scott from Florida had been prepared to challenge McConnell but has backed down in the face of these disappointing results. I think within that Senate Republican caucus, certainly, there are a lot more fingers pointed at Scott than there are at McConnell. No one has proposed to challenge McConnell directly.

You do have voices like Josh Hawley from Missouri saying there needs to be some change that because this has been a losing strategy, they need to go back to the drawing board and rethink everything from the first principles of the ideology to campaign strategy and so on. I think there may be a lively discussion potentially McConnell could even have to make a concession or two. He's thought to be pretty secure. I think it's more significant just that he has for so long had such tight control over that caucus that any suggestion that that's not the case is going to make it harder for him to participate in negotiations and participate in governing going forward.

Brian Lehrer: Listener tweets, If it stays 50-50, don't be surprised if Joe Manchin, conservative Democrat from West Virginia switches parties that would grant him more power. You think that's a possibility Molly?

Molly Ball: It's hard to imagine how Joe Manchin could have more power than he already does. Look at the amount of influence that he had over the 50-50 Senate over the past two years. Some people described him as the real President Joe. I don't think he feel-- and he's obviously had many opportunities, many a lot of encouragement from the other side to make that switch.

He will eventually be up for reelection again. I think it would've been much easier to imagine him potentially even being tempted to switch if Republicans had won the Senate, because then by switching he would've had a shot at chairing committees. He would've been in the majority and be able to influence legislation in that way. At this point particularly if it's 50-50, every senator is the deciding vote and nobody has maximized the potential of the leverage of that position more already than Joe Manchin.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, great point.

Molly Ball: I don't think that the 50-50 Senate incentivizes him anymore.

Brian Lehrer: One thing to speculate on, if the Democrats win Georgia, they will actually have won more vote than they did before and that would mean they only need Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, not both to do things like abolish the filibuster. How big a deal is Georgia or not with control already assured?

Molly Ball: It is a big deal for that reason. Also because it gives Schumer more power to write the rules of the Senate. A majority is a majority but 51 seats interestingly is a much, much bigger majority than 50 seats despite having the Vice president's tiebreaking votes. I think there it's really early days in terms of even thinking about what this next Congress is going to do, simply because the results have not been what really anyone was expecting.

They've gone back to the drawing board. For example, there were a lot of things that Democrats assumed they were going to try to stuff into the lame-duck session because they thought they were about to lose the majority. Now that that's not the case, there's potentially more time in the coming term to work on those kinds of issues.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth Warren and maybe others are calling for an aggressive lame-duck session now that is from now to the end of the year before the new Congress takes over. Is there a chance to get something done now that they couldn't get done before the election?

Molly Ball: Sure and there are things that they have to get done. There's government funding the debt ceilings coming up and various voices are calling for that to be abolished or taken off the table. There's other fiscal deadlines coming up so they have to do some things in the La Duck. Whether they decide to go big in the lame duck as you said, as Senator Warren is suggesting, I think it also depends on what happens in the house because it appears all but inevitable that Republicans will take a very, very narrow majority in the house.

On the off chance that Democrats keep the house, then once again, it means that there's less need to pack things into the Lame Duck session. If we assume that Republicans are going to take the house that also throws a wrench into any grand plans that Democrats had for legislating so we'll see. I think there's a lot of conversations going on right now, a lot of strategizing and we're still waiting for these races to be called.

Brian Lehrer: The house could go either way.

A few seats one way or the other for a tiny majority for one party or the other. Last thing I'll say is that even if the Republicans win the house and Biden can get very little through Congress and the Democrats and the Republicans can't get much through Congress, I think it's really important for Biden's ability to get his choice of federal judges confirmed for the next two years. Supreme Court on down, depending on openings because he's got the Senate majority. Would you agree?

Molly Ball: Oh yes, absolutely. That's potentially the most important aspect of keeping the Senate for the Democrats because as we have seen in the toxic and polarized climate of today's US Senate, the opposing party doesn't give you anything. The Democrats have been very successful at making those appointments and getting those judges confirmed with a 50-50 Senate. I think the administration breathed a sigh of relief seeing the Democrats keep the Senate primarily for that reason.

Brian Lehrer: Molly Ball, National Politics correspondent for Time Magazine. Thanks for starting us off, Molly. Really appreciate it.

Molly Ball: Thanks so much for having me.

[00:21:19] [END OF AUDIO]

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