Commentator Major Garrett’s Forecast on the Midterm Elections

If you think government gridlock is bad, wait until you experience Senate “Ping-Pong.” That was the message that award-winning commentator and CBS News Chief White House Correspondent, Major Garrett, delivered to his audience of Realtors® and state and local lawmakers at this year’s Politics and Pancakes Breakfast at the NVAR Convention.

“If you think government gridlock is bad, wait until you experience Senate 'Ping-Pong'.”

THE ELECTIONS
Garrett predicts that in this year’s midterm elections the Republicans will win the narrowest of majorities in the Senate, 51 to 49. He further predicts that their hold on the Senate will be brief and will usher in a period of “Ping-Pong” where control of the Senate shifts between parties at every election.

Garrett asked, “What is the benefit of spending $1billion to decide whether Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell runs the Senate by a 1-vote majority? What difference will it make? If there’s not a fundamental change in how the two parties relate to one another and decide whether to accomplish things as opposed to maintaining their antipathy, it may not make a difference whether it’s Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell.”

In the audience, Congressman Gerry Connolly saw opportunity where others saw futility. If the Senate is 51-49 Republican, Connolly pointed out, this means that lots of the Republicans will be representing Blue States. If they narrowly control the Senate, they will have 20 seats up in Blue States in 2016. How can they hold the seats, Connolly asked, and please both their Republican base and their Blue State constituents?  Connolly speculated that they will be torn between their need to demonstrate ideological purity to Tea Party constituents and the desire to be re-elected.

Garrett said Republicans will retain control of the House. It’s merely a matter of how many seats they gain. Republicans, Garrett noted, are supremely organized to win mid-term elections. They are supremely disorganized to win presidential ones. 

Garrett listed likely candidates in the 2016 presidential election. For the Democrats, expect Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley to run. 
The Republicans, he explained, have several contenders:
• Texas Governor Rick Perry, who he said came off as supremely arrogant in 2012
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Bridgegate will haunt him, Garrett said. Returns from the 1st four States –  Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada – aren’t good for him. 
• Texas Senator  Ted Cruz
• Florida Senator  Marco Rubio 
• Ohio Governor John Kasich
• Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who is perceived as too divisive 
• Indiana Governor Mike Pence 
• Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, whom Garrett predicted will be an early leader at the midterms. 

A MATTER OF STYLE?
In his role as a White House correspondent, Garrett says, “I’m asked all the time, ‘Has the President checked out?  Is he just tired of doing the job?’ Being at the White House, I never feel that. I never sense that in him or in the people who work around him.”

“He has a different style,” explained Garrett “It was a style that worked magnificently for him in the 2007-2008 campaign. But we’re in a different climate,” Garrett added. Events on the world stage have been incredibly challenging. The volatile political environment has left people feeling shaken and confused rather than fired up for their particular issue or party”. 

  

When asked what he thought of Leon Panetta’s Presidential critique, Garrett said, “When you’re president you have to fight for things and you have to make people do things they don’t want to do.”  Lyndon Johnson was a master at this, he mentioned. “Obama doesn’t get into people’s faces,” he said.  He doesn’t fight except for a few initiatives such as ObamaCare and the Cap and Trade Bill, Garrett explained. For the most part, Obama appears to lack the intensity needed to push his ideas through. He doesn’t want to waste energy on fights he thinks he can’t win, concluded Garrett.

IMMIGRATION
Garrett said that immigration will be a bigger issue post- election. If Republicans gain control of the Senate and they have control of the House, they will be obligated to present an immigration reform policy, he explained. 

They can’t be silent for the two years that they are running Congress. It would be giving up on an issue that’s central to the Republicans’ presidential election platform. The problem is that immigration reform is a “radioactive issue” that none of the Republican presidential candidates want to identify with. However, the party’s evangelical and business bases will want action, Garrett explained. 

After the election, Obama may use his executive authority to grant legal status to 3-5 million long-standing immigrants who came to the U.S. without papers and who have worked and established families in communities here, Garrett predicted. If that happens, it is possible that a Republican-controlled House and Senate will refuse to fund it. This sets the stage for a government shutdown. “And don’t think the White House hasn’t thought this through,” Garrett said. “Would it not like to see Republicans, as soon as they become the governing party, run themselves into a shutdown box canyon over immigration?”  

BIG MONEY
Regarding a question about whether mega-donors have skewed the political process, Garrett confessed to nostalgia for the old soft money system. When party machines controlled the distribution of political donations, “it wasn’t ideal” but you had a wall between donors and individual candidates, he said.

 The committees served as a clearinghouse for political donations, according to Garrett. They limited the amount of direct influence that big donors could have over candidates. An unintended consequence of the McCain-Feingold reform was that it got rid of the middleman and gave big donors more control over where their money goes.
However, many of the dire predictions about big money buying elections are overstated, he pointed out. In the 2012 campaign, super PAC money didn’t affect the election’s outcome. In some ways, the efforts of super PACS cancelled each other out

A TIME OF TRANSFORMATION
Garrett said that while gridlock may prevail on the Hill, “we are living in an amazing decade of political transformation.”  In the 2004 election, the legalization of gay marriage seemed remote, yet it only took a decade for the nation to accept this change, he pointed out. “It underscores something that is majestic and beautiful about our country. We change faster than any civilization on planet Earth. Change is happening right before our eyes.”