US midterms: Will it be blue trickle, blue wave, or blue tsunami?

...program tonight. Where do you think this is heading? Do you think this is going to be a blue trickle, a blue wave, or a blue tsunami? Or maybe you think it's going to be a blue nothing. Good evening to you. Good evening. I don't think it's going to be a blue nothing. I think it's somewhere between a blue wave and a blue tidal wave from everything that we've seen. And the reason, and it's very good that you said early on, like polling has been wrong before, but here's what people do when they're professionals and they're good at this and they do it. You look at the polls over time, you look for consistency, you look for, you know, outliers. And if you look at the polls and there's been a lot of it and a lot of them good polls over time, they show very strong trends. You know, whether it's the Democrat who's up in the Senate race in Texas, which would be a huge flip for the Democrats to take Texas huge or what's going on in the state of Ohio, for example. So I think that based on what we're seeing, everything that I see anyway, safe to say the House will flip somewhere between 15 and 25 seats. That's be a big, much bigger lead for the Dems than the Republicans have now. The Senate. Some call it a coin toss. I got to tell you, there are now seven states in play that could flip from Republican to Democrat. The Democrats need four, as you know. And, you know, there was one or two there that are completely solid and there's no question at all. So they've got a lot of routes to take the Senate back. The Democrats do. So I'm thinking this is going to be, as I say, a blue wave, whether it's a tidal wave. We're going to know in a few hours as we start seeing these things come in. Frank, one of the most extraordinary things about observing this campaign over the last many weeks is that Donald Trump has so often traveled to states that normally are not considered battleground swing states, the states that sometimes vote Democratic, sometimes vote Republican, always decide the outcome of each election. Instead, he's been going basically to To shore up Republican support or to try to do it in reliably Republican states. I mean, please. Places like Texas hasn't sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. Kansas hasn't sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. I mean, that is a clear indicator, isn't it, that he and his fellow Republicans are in difficulty? One hundred percent, Simon. I mean, look, here's the thing we need to say. I would say about 80 percent of this election is a referendum on Donald Trump. When we hear that the issues that people care about are affordability, it's Donald Trump's tariffs. It's Donald Trump's war that has aggravated inflation. When we hear people say they're worried about the price of gasoline and they give him 23 percent approval rating on handling the price of gasoline in the United States of America. This becomes a referendum on Trump. I think it goes beyond that. I think it goes beyond the pocketbook issues to just the tone that he has set in the country. And we've seen, you know, huge numbers of people show up in these, you know, no kings rallies. Well, now you don't just go for a rally. You can actually do something and cast a vote, which is why turnout, early voting turnout is so high and disproportionately Democrat. So what is. Trump got left to do, not to win over the swing voters, not to win over people who are, well, maybe I'll do this or maybe I'll do that. He's just trying to get his base to turn out because Republicans are so worried that a lot of Republicans are going to sit on their hands. And so that's why, yes, we've seen him going to Kansas, to Mississippi, to Texas, places that should be rock solid and they shouldn't be spending time or money on. And, Frank, while you've been talking, we've been seeing some of the numbers from the voter poll, the exit poll that's been taken throughout the day as voters have departed polling stations. It shows that 75 percent of voters say they are angry or dissatisfied with how things are going in the U.S. And that 39 percent of voters say that the economy was their number one issue, propelling them into polling stations today. And, you know, Donald Trump's continuing claims that the affordability... affordability crisis is a concocted phrase by Democrats. I mean, that just doesn't ring true with members of the public when they go to the grocery supermarket checkout or they fill their car up with petrol and diesel. And today, today, Election Day, the price of petrol and diesel reached a record high here in the United States. That's an impossible mountain for the Republicans to turn around, surely. It's an impossible bond. Throw in mortgage rates, throw in a few of these other things. It doesn't get better. Look, you pointed out something very important that people should understand as we start to get ready to see what the results are going to be. Donald Trump violated the first rule of politics when he ran around the country saying affordability issues, inflation is a hoax. The rule he violated is he negated, he denied, he contradicted what people are living in their own lives, right? Take a page from Bill Clinton's book. Bill Clinton, when he ran and won, it's the economy, stupid. He acknowledged that first. And then he said, I feel your pain. Politicians need to acknowledge the pain, the experience that voters are having, otherwise voters say you're completely out of touch. So what does Trump do? He goes around, he says it's a hoax, and instead he talks about building a ballroom on the White House, in the White House, or working at the Reflecting Pool, which was his closing speech at the Reflecting Pool. So to a lot of voters, and this is why some of these numbers are so serious for the Republicans Republicans, and they know it, Trump is out of touch. Trump is not talking about what they're experiencing, and that's why his numbers and the numbers on these issues—affordability, inflation, gas prices—are so terrible, as you cite. And if they're playing through in the exit polls, which means those are the people who are going to vote, that does not bode well for the Republicans as these results start to come in. And let me ask you about the Democrats, of course, because in a way they haven't had to do very much and they certainly haven't offered specific answers to issues that the country is facing for many voters. For example, the war in Iran. They're critical of the war in Iran that Donald Trump started to wage back on February the 28th. I haven't seen any indication of what they would do to try and bring it to an end on the affordability. crisis. They say that they want to bring prices down. But, you know, doing that from seats in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate is difficult. Is there any sense in which the Democrats have to be careful over the course of the next two years that if they win a thumping victory tonight, expectations among members of the public for what they're going to do in Congress will have to be managed by Democratic Party? leaders. They're going to have a minefield to run around to, the Democrats, for all the reasons you say. And there's already a lot of talk about if the Democrats take control of one or both of the houses, what investigations do they launch? And they've already teed some up that they're instantly going to do. Are they going to impeach Donald Trump a third time or try to impeach him a third time? What do they stand for? You know, so Abdul El-Sayed, the very controversial Democratic Senate candidate in the state of Michigan has a pretty simple platform. You know, lower prices and tariffs so that he can bring, you know, bring more cost of gasoline and other things down. And then Medicare for all addressing the health care issue. But that's that's really very vague. It's not a policy prescription. So what are they going to expect to do? They're not going to get much done, Simon. You know this. You know, if Donald Trump is in the White House and Democrats are in the Congress, don't expect much. But it will be a lot of positioning for 2028, and therein lies their problem.