The Playbook Podcast

Let’s start with Joe Biden. 

A midterm is a referendum on the president. By all historic measures, voters should have handed Biden’s party a massive rebuke. Inflation is at historic levels, crime is up, Biden’s approval is underwater, Democrats have one-party control. The party of recent presidents in similar circumstances lost between 40 and 63 House seats.

And yet here’s where things stand this morning:

— In the House, Republicans are expected to gain control the chamber, but well short of both historical averages and pre-election predictions. Addressing supporters early this morning — hours after Republicans thought they would have victory in hand — Kevin McCarthy could only promise, “When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority.” (Like his prior prediction that Republicans would gain 60 seats, that, too, has failed to pan out.)

— In the Senate, the outcome hinges on Nevada, where incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto fell behind her GOP challenger Adam Laxalt this morning, and Georgia, where Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is ahead by a hair but the race is likely headed for a runoff on Dec. 6. Republicans need to win both races to take control of the Senate. (Wisconsin and Arizona haven’t been called, but the incumbents — Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Mark Kelly, respectively — are ahead in both states.)

Many of the (plausible) outcomes predicted by top GOP officials didn’t materialize. There was no massive shift of the Hispanic vote toward the GOP. There was no surge of hidden Trump voters. There was no widespread takeover of deep blue House territory. There was no expansion of the Senate map into New Hampshire, Colorado and Washington, where incumbent Democrats cruised to reelection. The governor of New York won easily.

There was no red wave. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Every ad has been cut. Every speech has been delivered. Every poll has been taken. And now we wait for the voters to decide. 

Needless to say, the stakes are high. Inflation is at a 40-year peak, abortion rights are on the ballot, rising interest rates are stoking recession fears and election deniers are on the cusp of taking office.

But no one has more riding on the outcome than President Joe Biden. Throughout all the headwinds he has faced in the two years and one day since he clinched the presidency, he had House and Senate majorities and experienced congressional leaders backing him up.

Now that backstop is seriously at risk. A Republican House threatens to Roto-Root his administration with subpoenas while turning routine spending bills into high-stakes standoffs. A GOP Senate could compound the misery, hamstringing his ability to appoint judges, ambassadors and Cabinet officials.

So how is Bidenworld facing this moment of reckoning? By essentially arguing that, whatever happens, it could have been much worse.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

We’re truly in the home stretch with one day to go until Election Day. That means we are running out of precious time to deploy our favorite campaign season cliches. So allow us to note: It all comes down to turnout. And as we all know, the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day...

Playbook editor Mike DeBonis and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza preview the crucial week ahead, including, what should, actually, constitute a red wave?

In the House, the most likely outcome is that this will be a typical midterm in which the president’s party loses seats. The modern average is a loss of 27 House seats. Three of the last four presidents did much worse in their first midterms: Bill Clinton lost 54 seats, Barack Obama lost 63 seats, and Donald Trump lost 40 seats. 

Every election brings with it confident predictions of some enduring new majority. George W. Bush and Barack Obama were both seen as ushering in eras of dominance for their respective parties. Donald Trump’s election supposedly meant the end of the Democratic Party’s presidential prospects. Some liberals say that the 2018 and 2020 anti-Trump surges prove that a stable center-left coalition exists to extinguish MAGA. 

The challenge after Tuesday is to keep two things in mind: There can be a massive change in policy direction (the House flipping) with only a small change in the electorate (less than 5% of House seats changing hands).

Ryan's Playbook Deep Dive interview with Lynn Vavreck: Hindsight is 20/20

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Oprah Winfrey endorsed Democrat John Fetterman  in the ultratight Pennsylvania Senate race during a virtual GOTV event Thursday night. More than just another celebrity endorsement, it’s a pointed snub by Winfrey of Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor she single-handedly brought to national prominence.

"If I lived in Pennsylvania,” she said, “I would've already cast my vote for John Fetterman, for many reasons.”

The endorsement was in the works for months, our Holly Otterbein reported late last night: “Fetterman's orbit knew how powerful a nod from Winfrey would be, and it worked behind the scenes to court her. The Fettterman campaign made a direct appeal to her for a meeting, according to a person familiar with the outreach.”

And Steve Shepard shares his penultimate Election Forecast update, with ratings changes in three Senate, 13 House and four governor races. All but one are moving toward Republicans. 

The Senate … 

The overall landscape continues to be in “Toss-Up” territory, but Republicans appear to have a growing upside: With six races now coin-flips, an even split of those races would be enough to secure a GOP majority, while a sweep would hand the party 54 seats.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Last month, President Joe Biden told his team he wanted to do one more speech on the dangers facing American democracy before the midterms. 

Biden had already delivered a grand address on the issue, on Sept. 1 in front of  Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. But aides and allies said this week that Biden has become increasingly dismayed as more election deniers emerged from Republican primaries to wage competitive general election campaigns. And, as evidence emerged that democracy had moved up the list of voter concerns, he wanted to take another crack at it. 

In a quickly assembled event Tuesday night at Union Station, the president delivered a sharp, clear message asking voters to put election lies and political violence at the top of their minds as they cast their midterm ballots.

And, POLITICO tech reporter Rebecca Kern stops by to discuss Elon Musk's reign as CEO of Twitter, when former president Donald Trump may or may not return, and the future of content moderation on the platform.

Read Rebecca's reporting:

Musk personally led call with civil rights groups to address hate speech on Twitter

Top firm advises pausing Twitter ads after Musk takeover

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

There are just six days left in this chaotic midterm, which means campaigns around the country are readying their final pitches for voters. 

Candidates traditionally use their last flight of ads as a “closing argument” — a chance to tell voters who they are, what they plan to do if they win and, most importantly, ask for their vote. It’s the executive summary of their campaign, typically delivered direct-to-camera in a bid to make one final connection with voters.

But this year has been anything but typical. As those final ads have started trickling into Playbook HQ (with a big assist from POLITICO campaign guru Steve Shepard) we’ve seen some candidates observe the old pieties, while others just continue bludgeoning their opponents.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Even though it was Halloween, two political extremists were unmasked yesterday, one on each coast.

What they said tells us a lot about the future of political violence in America.

In Washington, at the Oath Keeper trial, Graydon Young, the first Oath Keeper to plead guilty to charges related to storming Congress on Jan. 6, broke down in tears as he apologized for his role. “I guess I was acting like a traitor against my own government,” he said. 

In San Francisco, an FBI agent who specializes in investigations of domestic terrorism —  that is, “primarily” Americans “who commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of their political or social ideology” — filed the criminal complaint against David DePape in which we learned the horrific details of the attack on Paul Pelosi. 

We tend to think of the Oath Keepers and groups like it as the face of political extremism and violence in America. But domestic politcal terrorists are increasingly more like DePape. The big trend is what terrorism researchers call “ungrouping,” in which individuals need no formal organization to recruit and indoctrinate them with fringe ideas when they have easy access to them online — and major political figures endorsing them.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Another landmark Supreme Court decision from the 1970s is likely to fall.

This morning, SCOTUS will hear oral arguments in two cases challenging the use of race in college admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. 

There is little mystery about the outcome. 

And Playbook deputy editor Zack Stanton stops by to give updates on key midterm Senate and House races just eight days away from Election Day.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

For months, President Joe Biden and Donald Trump have been shadow-boxing on the campaign trail — zig-zagging across the country on parallel paths that never quite intersected.

That’s about to change.

On the final weekend before Election Day, both men will campaign in Pennsylvania — “the must-win battleground has emerged as a proxy fight between the two,” report Christopher Cadelago and Meridith McGraw.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

Senior campaigns and elections editor Steve Shepard is out with the latest update of POLITICO’s 2022 forecast.

Let’s begin with the headline: Five races are changing in this update, four of them in the GOP’s direction and one toward the Democratic candidate:

Steve joins the show to break down the methodology behind the shifts and what else he's keeping an eye on with less than two weeks until Election Day. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.