Countdown to the 2006 Midterm Elections

MODERATOR: Good afternoon and welcome to the Department of State's Foreign Press Center. Today we're delighted to have back again -- he's been here before -- Chuck Todd. He's the editor-in-chief of Hotline. He's going to talk about the coming elections, one of the most interesting subjects we've had in recent days. But please feel free, he's going to make a very short statement and then we'll just get right into questions and answers. Please turn off your cell phones and identify yourself when you ask a question. Thank you.

MR. TODD: Thanks very much, good afternoon. The good folks here at the press center invited me to try to do a quick lay of the land and then also sort of be up here to be a resource for you guys. And I'm sure all of you have maybe some specific races of interest that you're fascinated about or maybe some demographic shifts or geographic issue and I don't want get bogged down in details until you tell me what details you want me to bog down into.

But I think -- what are we out now, four days out, 96 hours to go? And I think we know -- it looks like that the headline on Wednesday is going to be President Bush suffers his first political election defeat. It looks like this thing is turning into a democratic rout. All the signs are pointing to Democrats gaining momentum this week in all the close elections, be it in the House or in the Senate. Really pretty much every Senate race seems to be on the tipping point towards the Democrats, all the contested ones and it is the same with the House. There are a few exceptions here or there, but the overall pattern seems to be that the momentum is with the Democrats. And I think that, you know, it's for one reason and one reason only: Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. Iraq is -- a colleague of mine likes to put it -- Iraq is 70 percent of this election and then that other 30 percent is a tiny bit of everything else, right, the ethics and maybe in some places the economy is not so great. In the industrial Midwest of this country there are some job issues.

But overall the insecurity of the electorate, the anger is all around this war and its unease about Iraq. You can always tell what is the most powerful message that a challenger candidate has when you look at their final advertisements and all of the final advertisements, in just about every major race, are about President Bush and Iraq and the fact that President Bush wants to stay the course. And Senator "X" or Congressman "Y" also wants to stay the course 95 percent of the time, you know. It is exactly what is moving the needle, what is taking swing voters and pushing them toward the Democratic Party.

A few things about the sort of overall electorate, if you will, a lot of people might tell you -- you might have read that, oh, maybe the Republicans have a base problem. Actually they don't have a base problem. The problem the Republicans have is they have a middle problem. They are getting killed among independents. 1994 was the last time we had a transformative midterm election, where just one party took it on the chin, lost control of everything and it went to the other party. That was when the Democrats had control and it completely flipped to the Republicans. That election, in some ways, a lot of pollsters called it "the revenge of the angry white male." It was just -- it seemed like, you know, white men in general were moving toward the Republicans at a very fast clip.

This election I had a Republican pollster tell me this was going to be known as "the revenge of the independents" because right now you have the independents, these people right in the middle, who are acting like base Democrats. I mean, they are right now in polls going 2-1 for Democratic candidates all over the country. There's not a Republican candidate outside of the guy running in Rhode Island who's winning independents. Democrats are winning independents right down the line, every contested major House race, every major Senate race. And the whole question in this election for the last three months is will these independents vote.

I had my doubts that these independents were going to show up. I thought the angry independent was going to stay home. I thought the angry independent didn't trust the Democrats yet. I thought the angry independent, while they're not happy with where the Republicans are going, they're not yet ready to give power to the Democrats. You know, they just weren't going to be motivated and they weren't going to show and that happens I'd argue five times out of six when it comes to midterm elections. But there is always that one, one a decade, one every 12 years, where these independents do show up. You know, it's about every -- it's interesting if you look at post-World War II, about every decade or so, there has just been one midterm election where they weren't about local elections. It was about a big national issue. You go back -- Watergate during -- well, after President Nixon resigned, that midterm election was just a huge watershed nationalized environment; 1982, the first two years after Ronald Reagan, that was where Republicans just took a beating; 12 years later, '94, and the Democrats interestingly enough it's 12 years later and we're at this point. And there are all sorts of reasons we could point to institutionally of how we got here. So there is that other feeling that independents are going to show up I think and I think they're going to show up in a big way.

I think the thing that got them to show up, there were two things this month that I think crystallized this vote: One, was Foley, the Mark Foley scandal. It had nothing to do with the salaciousness of the scandal, but what it did was it crystallized that ethics issue. Ethics had been sort of a background issue with these congressional elections, you know. Iraq was the overarching -- it still is and will be the reason if Republicans lose control of everything it will be because of Iraq. But what this ethics thing did is it added to the other muck that the Republicans had acquired with other scandals and suddenly it was the last straw for a lot of, I think, of this angry independent.

And then the second thing was the fact that one of the bloodiest months for American soldiers is this -- was just October, that we just got through it. And I think in that sense that the headlines where literally 105 U.S. soldiers die in a month of Iraq was sort of in the final campaign month. Well, that just took that issue and it hardened the views.

I think it's interesting in this most recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, President Bush's job rating went up a tick, his rating on the economy actually went up, his rating on Iraq went down. And that just shows you it's sort of like voters are focused and they realize this election is about Iraq, they're unhappy and they're going to send a message.

I think -- I would be shocked if -- you know, I think if you held this election ten times, seven times, it would be a route for the Democrats because I think there's really only a 30 percent chance that somehow Republicans are able to somehow hold the Senate and keep their loses to the House to a bare minimum where they'd lose the majority of the bare minimum.

So I'll stop there, keep it -- I wanted to keep it very general and let you guys tell me where you want to dive in and we'll go from there.

QUESTION: Thank you. I'm Sam Youngman. I'm with Asahi Shimbun. Chuck, how are you doing?

MR. TODD: Nice to see you.

QUESTION: You mentioned that the Bush -- that the Republicans don't have a base problem, but between Foley and this incident out of Colorado, is there anything to the notion that so-called values voters will stay home this time?

MR. TODD: It’s -- look, where this is a problem -- I don’t believe these values voters stay home. I believe they show up and vote. I believe they’ve always showed up to vote. The question is, are they going to make the hundred phone calls that they made the last time? Are they going to send those extra emails? I think that’s in doubt. There’s been an enthusiasm problem.

But when you look at the Republican coalition, not at the right, the conservative -- the base conservative -- it’s interesting, when you break it down, the base conservatives are showing up. They’re popping in polls, They’re voting 95-5 for Republicans, sort of in the same way liberal Democrats vote 95-5.

But one of the small differences in polling lately is that among so-called moderate Democrats, they’re voting 95-5 for Democrats. Moderate Republicans are voting 80-15. So the part of the Republican coalition the Republicans are losing are not the base; it’s this moderate Republican and it’s not about Foley. It’s -- for them, it’s about -- some of them it’s immigration, some of them it’s spending. Some of it is the war incompetency. Some of it was Katrina and this whole idea, the whole reason they’re Republicans is to cut their taxes and make government work. And now, it looks like government doesn’t work.

So I think these social issues are distractions. In sporadic areas, they cause problems. There's Colorado’s evangelicals, that’s probably going to cost them one more House seat in Colorado. They already were going to lose one. Now they’re going to lose two, you know.

QUESTION: So you think the evangelical base is intact, though?

MR. TODD: I think it’s more intact. I think it’s -- I think we in the media do -- collectively, and I don’t want to speak for the international press here, but I mean, in the domestic press corps, we have bought into that storyline, I think, a little too well. It’s -- you know, it’s always been the case that churchgoers are more likely to vote than not vote. You know, they’re already -- churchgoers are community activists by nature and community activists by nature always go vote.

So I’ve always thought that that was a -- what the Republican Party did with the evangelical community is they made them political organizers. They had them reach out and expand and go out and they put them to work. You know, those folks were always there and they were always voting, but they actually weren’t working and becoming part of the tools of political campaigns.

QUESTION: Yes, my name is Daniel Anyz. I'm with Czech daily paper. I think you will be surprised if we don’t ask the question about the Kerry factor joke or the Kerry joke factor. Did it play any role or --

MR. TODD: I think the Kerry joke was a cable news thing for a couple days, but it -- I don’t really think it penetrated that much. I think what it -- a couple of things that it did, one is it made Republicans feel good for a couple of days. You know, they’ve been feeling like crap, pardon my French, but they’ve been just feeling awful. I thought that that joke would be a little funnier here when I say "Pardon my French" than anywhere else. (Laughter.)

They just have been down in the dumps and I think it was really telling to me when how quickly the entire Republican Party apparatus quickly seized on this moment as if John Kerry had actually killed a troop or something. You know, I mean, he made a bad joke and the entire party came down on him. You know, look, it was -- what he -- this is typical of who John Kerry is and it was kind of a selfish act of him to keep himself in the news for three days when he actually could have just -- you know, apologized and gotten off stage.

But he didn’t do that, I mean, because that isn’t who John Kerry is. He’s got to prove that he’s correct. But I don’t think it has a -- you know, every day is a week in the last week of a campaign, you know, as far as voters. Don’t forget what they’re seeing on television. They’re not seeing John Kerry right now. They’re seeing these paid political advertisements about how President Bush and Iraq is a mess.

QUESTION: Ron Baygents, Kuwait News Agency. You’re saying -- I hear you saying that -- your odds on the Senate. Could you hit down the ones that, among others, you may not be so sure about? Just quickly, Burns, Allen, the Tennessee race, the Missouri race in particular? It seems to me I’m seeing a distinct possibility the Republicans win in some of those and you seem to be going the other way.

MR. TODD: Well, here --

QUESTION: One other question.

MR. TODD: Sure, okay.

QUESTION: It’s all connected.

MR. TODD: Yeah.

QUESTION: And then how does the idea that Lieberman is going to be elected, which seems to be a slam-dunk, and here’s a guy who’s totally pro-Iraq War in a northeastern state, how does that mix into how to control the Senate will play out? Thank you.

MR. TODD: I think that when you look at these races individually, you’re absolutely right, okay? Missouri is such a coin flip. In fact, in a vacuum, I think Talent would win that race more times than not. So in vacuums, I believe that these races are -- the problem is you have this national environment that’s sort of stepping on him.

And if you look historically, just recent history, the last four election cycles -- midterm election cycles, particularly in Senate races, the final -- where you just described the final five tossups, some -- in ’98, 2000, 2002 and 2004, 80 to 90 percent of the final 10 tossup races all went to the same party. Yet we have -- it’s an amazing ability, the Senate races, they move -- these close Senate races all seem to tip in the same direction.

And that’s why I’m going with that overarching thing. You want to -- look, you want to go individually? I’ll tell you this. As Missouri goes, so goes the Senate. That is the one race that has not moved in either direction. Virginia, you get the idea that Jim Webb has got a little bit of momentum and he’s got the wind at his back right now. In Montana, Burns has certainly closed the gap, but even Burns’ people will tell you, "Look, this is still probably a pinky on the scale for Tester." Tennessee is a whole another story. Tennessee, to me, is the one race that’s not part of the national climate. Okay, Tennessee is about Harold Ford. Luckily for the Democrats, or unluckily for the Republicans, Tennessee is not actually part of the equation as far as majority is concerned because of what George Allen did to himself in Virginia. They threw that extra race on there. And I would actually add one more that I actually think you have to count as a toss-up right now and that's Rhode Island. I think that Chafee is not a slam dunk for losing the way some believe. There's been some evidence that that's close. You know he votes his state. Now I think that we could be seeing a demographic shift in all of New England where basically all those moderate Republicans who have always voted their districts, you know, and will get punished for their party ID. That's sort of what's going on up there. Is that what's going to happen? Are they basically saying, you know, Lincoln Chafee, you voted the way I want you to vote and you voted against the war -- this is a guy who voted against the war -- but we're firing you because you have an R next to your name. And if Chafee goes, then that probably means all those House races.

To your Lieberman point, I think Lieberman is going – it is not a slam dunk for the Democrats. As far as him staying with the Democratic Party, I think it is very likely that -- a couple of scenarios that I've been playing around with that I think are very possible. One is, let's say the Democrats get such a wave that they also get Arizona. Okay, it's possible. In wave elections, people like me have a way of underestimating how big -- how many people come. And Arizona is a race where the incumbent can't get over 50. He's got a single-digit lead but it's possible that -- the Arizona Senate race could come to and let's say -- well, suddenly, they don't need Lieberman to have control. You could see the liberal wing of the party say "kick him out. We don't want him; don’t give him his seniority."

And he may say fine, if that's what you want to do and either go to the Republicans -- probably not -- or actually say I'm going to be an independent. Right, but he's running as an independent who says that Harry Reid has promised him his seniority and that he will caucus with the Democrats. But he sees -- he had an interview earlier today on Imus where he just ripped into Chris Dodd, his fellow senator in Connecticut, and made it seem to me that he's not a slam dunk that he's going to be a proud member of the Democratic Party anymore, that he's going to embrace this independent streak that he's got, and he's going to be what Jeffords was.

And possibly if the Democrats mistreat him, be a free agent and negotiate and maybe always stay an independent, but maybe he'll say you know what, maybe I'll caucus with the Republicans for this cycle and really use it as a negotiating ploy to make sure he doesn't lose his seniority. I think Lieberman's more -- you know, he's feeling cocky now that he's going to win this thing. And he's basically -- he kept a list of everybody who he felt sold him out and he's going -- and it's payback. I think he's going to -- I wouldn't -- if I was a Democrat, I'd be very worried about Joe Lieberman.

QUESTION: Will you go ahead and give us the number that you're going to predict, 51, 52 in the Senate, whatever you think? And in the House.

MR. TODD: Okay, sure. My numbers have been basically -- it's sort of I think the floor in the House is 18 seats, and I think -- the absolute high ceiling. And I'd say it's either going to be 18 or 35. I don't believe it's a range. I either believe the wave is there and they get 35 House seats, or it's not there and they get 18 because right now it does seem like they're going to get at least 17 or 18 even in a worse-case scenario.

The Senate I think it's an either or in this situation. It's either going to be four -- a pick-up of four and, therefore, come two seats short so the Democrats -- or it's going to be seven. Again, I don't believe it's a range. I think that that it all either tips or it doesn't, explaining to you the same effect that we've seen over the last four cycles.

QUESTION: Hoda Tawfik-Mikaiel from Al-Ahram from Egypt. Whatever the results are, the outcome of the election, how would it affect the foreign policy of the United States especially Iraq or Middle East, democracy, what else?

MR. TODD: I think that, you know, Howard Dean, Chairman of the DNC, has an amazing ability sometimes to just speak his mind to the point of where he actually says something that's true. And he said the other day, you know, even if the Democrats get control, it's not going to change foreign policy because President Bush is still going to be the President. And he's right.

You know, I think it means you will see some oversight. I think it means that you will see some, you know, a few more -- you won't see investigations. I just don't think politically that the Democrats will be that stupid. The country doesn't want investigations. What they want is -- they want more of a check. They want to -- they want there to be accountability every time Bush comes to ask for more money for Iraq or whatever.

I do think Bush will use this as an excuse to change policy a little bit. You can already tell he's trying to recalibrate because, you know, the bigger problem Bush is going to have is not with Democrats -- if Democrats win Congress, particularly if they win both. It's the Republicans who survived who are going back there going, you know, the only reason we're in the minority, that guy, you know, President Bush and his Iraq policy is why I'm not chairman of this committee anymore. And they're not going to be as loyal to the President, so he's got no choice, but to do some altering of expectations out of Iraq. Probably means timetable, probably means certain things like that. But as far as the philosophy behind our foreign policy, it's not going to change. I mean, it just isn't.

MODERATOR: We'regoing togo to New York.

QUESTION: Yes, thank you very much. My name is Neeme Raud. I'm with Estonian TV. Republicans had the Foley scandal earlier this election campaign. Now there is a new scandal in Colorado with the leader of evangelicals who have had very close ties to Republicans. How this brewing scandal might influence if there will be any influence these elections overall the relationship between Washington and the religious right? Thank you.

MR. TODD: I'm just going to answer this question quickly because somebody else did ask it earlier, a version of it. I'll say this, I think event -- specific evangelical scandal in Colorado will have an effect on that Colorado seat - on a Colorado congressional seat that's in that district, that it will certainly depress Republican turnout in the state of Colorado and hurt them a little bit there. But I just don't believe the evangelical turnout was never actually the problem. This problem with the electorate has been about the middle for the Republicans. It's not as much an evangelical issue as I think the media likes to portray. But like I said, I've answered that one quickly because we did answer it earlier.

QUESTION: Hi.

MR. TODD: Hi.

QUESTION: My question is if the Democrats are -- I'm Patricia Mello from Estado Sao Paulo. If the Democrats win only the House, to what extent -- how much power do they get? To what extent were they going to be able to make changes?

MR. TODD: Well, look, the House is always a more powerful thing to control than the Senate. The party that is in control of the House has -- you can decide what even gets debated. You can decide what gets voted on. You can decide -- it's a much more -- the Senate, look, it doesn't matter which party controls the Senate. You know, we sit there and say that sometimes. But if you don't have 60 votes, then you know, yeah, there's some procedural things, but the minority in the Senate has much more power than the minority in the House. I guess that's a better way of comparing it. And you know, -- but the minority in the Senate can cause a lot of problems, the filibuster will -- you know, an individual Senator just has a lot of power. The minority in Congress has no power at all. So if -- you know, if you're going to get one as far as pure political power is concerned, control of the House is much more important than control of the Senate.

MODERATOR: We'll take one question in the back.

QUESTION: Thank you very much, Mr. Todd. My name is Masa Ota with Kyodo News Japanese Wire Service. Somebody, my colleague asked the, you know, question regarding Kerry's comment. But how do you interpret the comment by your President two days ago, he's going to, you know, he's not going to fire Rumsfeld and even he made some unnecessary statement about Cheney because he doesn't have any constitutional power to fire a vice president. So, yeah, so what the -- you know, what's the interpretation of his comment? And that's going to be extra damage to Mr. Kean in New Jersey and also some, you know, (inaudible) Republican candidates, Christopher Shays or you know, Deborah Pryce or what's your interpretation of that?

MR. TODD: You almost -- you answered the question as well as I would have. I mean, yes, you're right, when President Bush -- look, here's the problem. The President was asked directly, oh, you're going to keep Rumsfeld. What's he going to say? Okay, what's he going to say? Are you going to keep Rumsfeld and Cheney, no, I'm not going to get rid of him. Oh, my God, that would have been front page news. You know, breaking news, the President's going to fire Rumsfeld right now. Of course, he's going say he stands behind him, you know. I always look at it as, you know, and that could mean nothing. You know, I'm a fan of baseball. I could tell you baseball owners will say they stand behind the manager and the next day they fire the manager, right, you know, it's like, you know, sometimes the worse thing you do is get that commitment from your boss that everything's fine, everything's fine, next day there's your pink slip.

But I think that was damaging. It was a one-day headline, but it was a one- day reminder to all these voters that, you know -- because Rumsfeld is a very divisive figure in here. That said, the Republicans, the White House is not -- I don't think this White House is politically stupid enough to ever get rid of Rumsfeld. And the reason I think it would be politically stupid to do it is because the only thing more polarizing in this town than having Rumsfeld in there would be having these confirmation hearings for a new Defense Secretary in a time of war. And I think -- trust me, this White House I think would love nothing more than to see Rumsfeld go away, but the idea of trying to figure out how to get a new Defense Secretary confirmed -- particularly when you might have a Democratic Senate to deal with or a Senate that's 50-50 and Lincoln Chafee is one of the 50. Or you've got a majority that is not going to really want to hold you accountable and your Defense Secretary? President Clinton wanted to get rid of Janet Reno as Attorney General badly. And the only reason they ever kept her is because they knew the confirmation hearings would have been a bigger political disaster than keeping her there, and that's what I think you have with Rumsfeld. It's a bigger political disaster to get rid of them and try to replace him, literally short of -- unless John McCain was willing to take the job, and he won't be willing to take the job. He's got another job he wants.

QUESTION: My name is I Ching Ng. I'm with Asia Weekly. I have two questions. The first one is what is the outcome of this election will in any way affect the Sino-U.S. relations if the Democrats take control of the seats? The second question is I'm going to cover the Ohio race. I wanted to see if you have any suggestions, you know, issues, you know, things you think are important.

MR. TODD: You said Ohio, right?

QUESTION: Yes. Anything I should look --

MR. TODD: I'm not a foreign policy expert, so I really don't feel that I could speak to your first question. As far as Ohio is concerned, I mean the one thing you've got to know about Ohio is that it's going to be a really bad night for Republicans even if it's not such a -- even if they somehow have a better night everywhere else. Ohio has problems of corruption in their own state government. There's just a huge churn of change going on in Ohio. Ohio is sort of the backbone for the Democrats of winning back the House. They might win four-to-five House seats in Ohio. They may win -- they're obviously going to win a Senate seat. They're going to win a governor's election. But one thing I would caution everybody on is just because the Democrats sweep all these races in Ohio in '06 does not mean that the Democratic candidate for President is automatically the favorite to carry that state in 2008. You know, it's -- in 2002 Democrats won the governorships in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Iowa, in Pennsylvania and all these places, and it was not a guarantee that they were going to carry them all in the presidential race. The Democrats will win Ohio in 2006. Republicans won Ohio in 2004. Every election is different. So the only thing I would say about Ohio is don't get carried away that this is a trend. In some ways this is a firing. The voters of Ohio have fired the Republican Party because they're firing them up and down the ballot, but that does not mean they've hired the Democrats. In fact, this is a big challenge the Democratic Party's going to have with this election. They may win this in a rout, but they have not been hired by the American public. It's simply because they're not the Republicans -- they were just the alternate.

QUESTION: Hischem Melhem, An-Nahar Newspaper in Beirut and Arabya.

MR. TODD: Nice to see you.

QUESTION: How are you doing? Chuck, talk a little bit about why you don't think that the Democrats will not be tempted if they take the house to embark on a really wide-scale oversight investigation? Nancy Pelosi, you’re right, said that she will not contemplate impeachment, but those chairmen of the various committees, they have a great deal of leeway and I can see them drooling just to see the possibility of them dragging Rumsfeld and Rice and others to investigate Iraq, investigate the NSA program, not to mention other very sensitive issues.

MR. TODD: Well, I think you’re going to see -- look, I’m not going to sit here and say you’re not going to see any investigations, but they are going to be very policy-oriented. You know, you’re not going to see impeachment hearings or stuff like that, but you’ll see some oversight.

That said, the Democrats have to be very careful here because if they win the House, particularly if they win in a big way, they are going to be electing Democrats in places that President Bush carried just two years earlier; more importantly, places that the Republican candidate for President is probably going to carry in 2008. And all these new freshmen have got to run again in 2008 in a much tougher environment.

You know, they’re never -- you know, look, you don’t get -- you know, Republicans had this in ’02, Democrats might be looking like they’re having this now. You know, it’s easy -- you know, everybody is a genius when everybody wants to be for you in a campaign like this. There have been a lot of really smart Democratic strategists all of a sudden, and I would argue there have been a lot of really dumb ones that are going to get lucky and have some victories.

And so I think that you’re going to have a whole bunch of new freshmen members of Congress, particularly in the House, who immediately got to turn around and go -- man, they’re going to have targets on their back and they’re having to represent districts that will probably vote for whoever the Republican nominee is. So I think that Pelosi is politically -- if she wants to stay Speaker, that she will rein in her Chairmen. I think she has to. If she doesn’t, then it’ll be a two-year -- it’ll be a two-year term for the Democrats.

QUESTION: Lambros Papantoniou, Greek correspondent, Eleftheros Typos, Greek Daily, Athens. Sir, what is your prediction in California on the race for the Governor’s seat?

MR. TODD: You’re asking about your friend Mr. Angelides, aren’t you? I know, he’s a good Greek and he’s going to be a fine ex-candidate, you know.

(Laughter.)

MR. TODD: Yeah -- no, he’s --

QUESTION: (Off-mike)

MR. TODD: Yeah, exactly, no, no, no, no. He’s done, toast, finished. We can call it now if you want, the mercy rule. No, Arnold’s going to win certainly.

QUESTION: So he’s finished, then?

MR. TODD: He’s going to win -- Angelides is not going to be able to win, yeah. He’s down.

QUESTION: (Off-mike)

MR. TODD: Yeah, he’s down. I hear you.

QUESTION: Marek Walkuski from Polish Public Radio. I have a basic question. In the polls, Democrats lead -- have 15 points lead, 12 points lead, 18 points lead. Even if they do well on Tuesday, they’re going to have five-vote majority in the House. How is that? Could you explain that?

MR. TODD: Well, I mean, you’re assuming that they only win 15 or 20 seats, I think. And if they have that, well, then it’s a bad night for Democrats. I’ll be honest. I think if they don’t -- if their majority is less than five seats, it was a Republican victory, because it probably means they hold the Senate too. This means a few things.

One, it means there really is a Republican turnout machine that is just that much better than the Democrats. I think that it appears that Democrats have momentum and that they’ve gotten better at their get-out-the-vote apparatus and some of their other tools to win elections, and have caught up to the Republicans a little bit. But I’ll tell you, if that’s not true, then there has been a realignment and you will have a huge problem.

But you’re talking about this generic ballot, right? And people say, "Who is your vote for Congress going to be," and you see these numbers; sometimes, you got to be careful because, you know, there are 380 members of Congress who don’t have a real race. You know, and that’s split -- you know, and those -- they’re going to win 80/20. So you know, people that are caught in that poll, you know, obviously are -- you know, in fact, this year, there are more Democratic members of Congress going unopposed than Republican members.

So you have, potentially, people being polled who know they’re just going to vote for their Democratic member so it might skew the number a little bit. But if you’re looking for a number, I’ll say this. If the generic ballot -- when you see the exit polls come in and all the networks will say, "Well, here is the House vote itself." If you see the actual House vote, the national House vote approaching an eight, nine-point margin, which is what was -- you know, an exit was only like, a three or four-point margin in ’94 and yet, that was enough to tip 50 seats to the Republicans. If you see that number, the actual number at eight or nine, wow, it’s going to be 35 or 40 seats for the Democrats.

As far as these polls that you’re seeing, anytime the number is over -- you know, most pollsters will say the first five, the Democrats have a built-in five-point advantage. And after that five points, you know, probably -- it’s probably five seats for every two points in the national poll. It may be an estimation, I’d say that. Sometimes you’re just comparing apples and oranges.

QUESTION: Thank you, Kaori Iida with NHK Japanese Public Television. The Wednesday headline, "Bush suffers his first political defeat," how will this election affect the President’s last two years, especially on foreign policy, economic issues, Social Security, immigration? How is this going to affect his last two years?

MR. TODD: Well, I come at this -- you know, there’s been a lot of predictions that if Democrats get control of Congress, that means President Bush’s term has ended, he’s a lame duck, he’s done. And I actually think just the opposite. I think the best thing to happen for his presidency and his legacy is a Democratic Congress. It will make him more relevant. It will suddenly pit him against a foil. Bush is so good as a politician when he’s got something to run against and he’s got something to -- somebody to fight, somebody to be against.

And if he’s -- you know, if it’s him versus the Democrats in Congress, he’s going to win that fight. Every president does. You know, President Clinton became more relevant after Republicans took control of Congress in ’94 than before it. President Reagan had a 37 percent job approval rating right during the ’86 elections. After the Democrats won the Senate he’s fighting Congressional Democrats again and he’s vetoing things, he had an approval rating back up over 60 again.

So I think if Democrats get control of Congress, President Bush’s approval rating will be over 50 percent by the Fourth of July next year. And I think that because -- first of all, he’s going to get the immigration bill that he wants, because this is a bill, actually, that more Democrats support than Republicans. He’s going to be signing a minimum wage bill that’s going to be -- everybody’s going to be happy with, that everybody’s going to make themselves feel good about. He'll sign that. There's going to be some healthcare stuff that Democrats want to get through. He'll sign those things. You know, look, the Democrats have an -- they have to pass stuff, right? They have to legislate, and they're going to have to legislate in a way that they know Bush will sign things. And Bush is going to sit there, he's going to veto something every once in a while, and it's going to remind people of the power of the Presidency. I think it's going to make him -- I think it's going to make him more relevant domestically and might rescue his legacy in these last two years a little bit.

QUESTION: Joel Smith, Media 24 South Africa. Where do you think you see Carl Rove? Where has he been? And do you think he's going to have a (inaudible) this weekend?

MR. TODD: I'll tell you, everybody always mentions the Carl Rove conspiracy. You know, he's not that powerful -- he's not all-powerful. Trust me, if he was he'd have figured out how to win this Iraq war and figured out how to not have it a political liability. So he's clearly not as powerful as some of his enemies would like to think.

Look, I think that Rove probably is going to deserve a lot more blame for this election cycle than he's going to get to be honest. I think, you know, a lot of the Republicans that are running for Congress will tell you that they feel like the White House has been out of touch, that they have not moved fast enough, pivoted fast enough on some of these problems -- haven't used the right rhetoric when it comes to Iraq, haven't really paid attention to the sort of the issues that all these guys on the front lines are facing. So look, it's going to take a ding a little bit, Rove's reputation, if Democrats win control of both Houses, but it's not going to be the ding that it probably should be.

Because you know, White House was non-existent. You know, they didn't help recruit candidates. They didn't find -- this Senate should not be in play. This Senate -- it's absurd that the Democrats have a shot at picking up the Senate. But Republicans couldn't find candidates to run in places like Florida or North Dakota or New Mexico. These were three states that the President carried and they couldn't get viable candidates to run against potentially vulnerable Democrats. Instead, Republicans played nothing but defense. What did that do? That freed up money and resources for the Democrats to suddenly put Tennessee in play, to suddenly put Virginia in play. I mean it's a -- there was some strategic blunders very early on that this White House political shop didn't do in '02 and didn't make in '04 that they sort of dropped the ball a little bit in '06. But like I said, Rove's got a lot of protectors in the media. He'll be fine.

QUESTION: Yunzhao Pan from Xin Hua News Agency. What's -- how this outcome of this midterm elections will have on the Presidential elections in 2008?

MR. TODD: I think it does have a small but not insignificant impact. I think if you're Hillary Clinton, Democrats winning Congress isn't the best thing for you. I think that she's got a hard enough time to convince the public to elect its first woman President. Now she's got to fight the sort of gender stage a little bit with the first ever woman Speaker of the House. And she no longer gets to run as the changed candidate because Democrats are now part of the establishment. They'll be part of the governing structure. And so they'll be held almost as responsible or if not just as responsible as the White House for sort of governing the country. In general the Democrats might feel that a little bit of success in '06 may make it a little bit harder in ’08 because you can't just make that election all about change.

I think a democratic Congress is good for John McCain. John McCain does not have the support within the base Republican Party that he would normally need to win a nomination. But if Republicans suddenly think ‘oh my God we could lose it all, let's get behind the most electable guy even if we don't always agree with him.’ Maybe that helps John McCain be that guy. So I think that it could have an effect.

Another person that I think that it's going to just have benefited greatly out of these elections, particularly if Democrats win, and that's Barak Obama. He has been -- after Bill Clinton -- the second most popular person for candidates running to invite for rallies. He's been all over. He's the most popular Democrat in the Democratic Party that could run for President in '08. I mean right now Bill Clinton's the most popular Democrat but he can't run. If Barak Obama is the second most popular -- and there's going to be a lot of senators and members of Congress who get elected who will remember geez, Barak Obama, you know, he really generated enthusiasm. I had to pretend I didn't know Hillary Clinton. But I wasn't embarrassed about standing next to Barak Obama in my district or in my state. I think that -- I think nobody's had a better '06 -- 2006 on the Democratic side than Obama. I think it makes him a serious player if Democrats win Congress. So I guess that's -- that's sort of how I would split up the field a little bit.

QUESTION: And he's too young and he has not so much experience. How do you disclaim this?

MR. TODD: I'll tell you, you know, I hear you and, yet, he's speaking to the one issue that hits at the heart of why Republicans are struggling, and that is this polarization of the country -- that the country is divided pretty much right down the middle; that both parties govern to their extremes not to the middle. And here's a guy who sits there and says, you know, conservatives aren't evil, I like them. You know, Ken Mehlman, I went to law school with Ken Mehlman. You know, he's one of my closer friends. And it's this sort of can't we just solve the problems, this or that. The more important thing about him is our politics have been defined for the last 25 years by the Vietnam War and the culture wars of 1960s. He's the first guy running for President, potentially, not from that generation, who wasn't on the front lines of that war. Hillary Clinton was in that war. John Kerry was. And it has tripped up both parties, but it has tripped up these children of the '60s who have been dominating, and these culture wars have led to this polarization. They don't tear gas each other anymore the way they did in the '60s, but the same fights are now taking place between the two parties, and it's the same groups of people except now they're in power. I think Obama is the first one to speak to -- and just saying, "You know what, I’m the next generation." That potentially is a powerful thing. When you have gone Bush, Clinton, Bush and the country’s contemplating Clinton. That feels like that’s something in the rear-view mirror and he could be very powerful in saying, "No, I’m a new" -- and that youth becomes an asset.

MODERATOR: (Off-mike.)

MR. TODD: Yep, I can do one more question.

MODERATOR: One more question.

MR. TODD: Make it a good one.

QUESTION: Hi, Conrad Chaffee with Tokyo newspaper. You mentioned earlier on that in a real wave, the Democrats could take Arizona. Do you think that it’s possible -- looks like it’s maybe a five-point --

MR. TODD: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: -- gap right now, that those polls are missing some Hispanic voters who might be mobilized over this immigration issue?

MR. TODD: I don’t think -- look, the Hispanic community has not been as strong. We saw all those rallies during the immigration fight. 500,000 people would show up in L.A., 100,000 people in different places and I’ll tell you, the White House was saying to its base Republicans, "Look, guys, that’s what we’re fighting. Be careful. We don’t want to wake that sleeping giant. Let’s not be radical on immigration reform." And so the Democrats thought, "What an opportunity, let’s go register some voters."

But the Hispanic community -- unlike the civil rights movement in this country -- the Hispanic community has not viewed voting and political activism yet as its tool for political, for legislative satisfaction. And I think it has not yet translated, but I want to address the wave thing a minute. When you’re in the midst of a wave election, if you’re under the wave and you’re not at 50 percent, you’re probably going to lose.

And that’s why this Arizona race -- even though five points -- and I would argue five points, four days out, is usually insurmountable. Five points October 1^st, is not a large lead. Five points November 3^rd is a gigantic lead, except if you’re in the wrong end of a wave.