Kim Strassel- “Who’s Everybody Chasing” in This Midterm Election?

Full Interview Below:

Full Transcript:

Guy Benson: Well, joining us now is Kim Strassel, Fox News contributor and member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. She’s got her very popular Potomac Watch column weekly. She’s based in Alaska. I’ve got something to ask her on that front here in just a second. You can read her bestselling books, and you can follow her on social at Kim Strassel. Kim, it is always great to have you. Thank you so much for making time today.

Kim Strassel: Hi, Guy. It is great to be here, as always.

Guy Benson: Before we zoom out on the midterms, let’s zoom in on your home state, or your adoptive home state, of Alaska, where there is a very important and contested Senate race. The polling suggests that Democrats have a decent shot at picking up a seat there and unseating Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent.

There’s some chicanery going on on the ballot there under the system that you guys have. Then some revelations recently maybe rippled through the race. What is your read right now on the Alaska Senate contest?

Kim Strassel: It’s going to be really tough. And I think this is striking. Some people would be surprised to know Alaska votes pretty solidly Republican when it comes to presidential races. The races are often a lot closer when it comes to Senate and House contests. And that’s the real issue here.

They always knew there was going to be a closeness. And then the chicanery, as you said, comes in where, right before the filing deadline, a man who’s never engaged in Republican politics before registers to run on the ballot as a Republican under the name Dan Sullivan, exactly the same as the incumbent.

And a little digging found out that he had interactions with Democratic consultants. In the past, this candidate has donated to Mary Peltola, who is the main opponent to the sitting incumbent senator.

And so this looks–I mean, all the classic signs of a plot designed to confuse average Alaskans. They go in to vote, they have a top-four ballot in Alaska’s silly ranked-choice voting system, and they see two Dan Sullivans there. If you can draw off a couple thousand of them, that really gives Mary Peltola a better chance of winning that seat.

Guy Benson: And the polls suggest that it’s very close. She’s leading in a number of them, although narrowly. We’ve talked a bit here on the show about some former staffers of hers blowing the whistle on some of her personal behavior and the way that she treats people–the screaming at one point about someone she was annoyed with, saying that she hoped that that woman died of a botched abortion, apparently shoving a staffer at one time.

That kind of flies in the face of the public image that Mary Peltola has put out there in her political career. Is that something that moves the needle at all, this stuff in Alaska?

Kim Strassel: I think it does, and here’s why. It’s not in any way going to dissuade Mary Peltola’s rock-ribbed supporters, the people that were always going to go out and vote for her, who view this race in life-and-death terms.

The question is the independents, the people who were kind of thinking about going to vote, but they’re not entirely sure. Then they read this and they wonder, “Do I really want to make the effort to go out and elect someone who seems to be another typical two-faced politician, who obviously also can’t even kind of manage to keep her office in a happy environment? How is she actually going to deliver for Alaska?”

So it’s a question of dampening the enthusiasm, and I think that that does undermine her.

Guy Benson: Let’s now zoom out, as I said we would, on the overall midterm picture. There are a few different ways I want to come at this.

First, you have a great column about what you see as an ongoing missed opportunity for the GOP in terms of making a proactive case to the electorate. And you’re kind of saying, “Listen, guys, gals, and the Republican Party, talking about certain past achievements the way that you’re talking about them is not going to work.”

And you might say, “Well, that’s unjust.” Well, it is what it is.

And then talking about, sort of vaguely, the threat of socialism and communism–while I think that is a very fair warning, especially given some of the people on the ballot–that may not be sufficient either. You have to hone the message in certain ways.

And you think that there is kind of a way to bring together these various threads in a message that could be pretty compelling, but the GOP is not really engaging in that right now. What are they doing, in your mind, and what should they be doing?

Kim Strassel: I mean, they need to be talking about what will happen if Democrats take control. Not in a fearful, “They’re communists” kind of way. Okay, we get that. But they need to talk about the relatively recent governance of Democrats and how nothing in that party–no stripes–have changed.

And they need to be comparing what their own next plans are. By the way, it would be very, very helpful, Guy, if they actually had some next plans.

Guy Benson: Yeah.

Kim Strassel: If they were telling voters, “Look, here’s why you need to return us to office. This is our unfinished agenda. This is what we’re going to do to make it better.”

But you need to be talking about the inflation that went on under Biden, and also the plans Democrats have if they come back. There are no plans for Democrats to do anything that is actually going to reduce prices for Americans. We know that. In fact, they’re not running on that.

I mean, this is going to be drama, impeachment, investigations, and it’s going to roil the opportunity to make more progress on the economy.

Guy Benson: You know, you just kind of touched on something that I have mentioned a few times. I know you’ve also written about this, and I’m sort of surprised that more Republicans are not explicitly making this case in a pointed way when it comes to gas prices and diesel prices, which are too high and it’s biting Americans. And I get all that. That’s real.

I would say you’ve got to talk about the trade-off and sort of the policy implications and why we’re doing what we’re doing, how it’s succeeding right now.

I think the messaging has been scattered at best from the administration, from Republicans who are just sort of scared of their own shadows in some ways. There’s a case to make to the American people on this, but it’s been very, very messy and sort of convoluted at times, and often just completely absent.

But on one hand, you’ve got, “Hey, here’s what we’re doing and why, and here’s why the pain is short-lived, but it is worth it.” Not an easy thing to argue to voters, obviously, but at least it’s something.

And the other side of it is our opponents, who are out there cutting a bunch of ads outside gas stations about how expensive things are and, “Isn’t this terrible?” and blaming us. Things were worse when they were in charge, A, and B, their policy, if they get power, is higher energy prices.

They should be thrilled that energy prices are up because they want to get rid of fossil fuels. They’ve talked about this endlessly. We see this as a tough, yes, painful blip for a good reason, toward our overall lower-energy-costs, energy-dominance agenda. They have a completely opposite worldview where they want prices to go up, and if you give them power, that’s exactly what they’re going to pursue.

I haven’t heard that articulated very often by these Republicans.

Kim Strassel: And it’s so important to articulate it, too, Guy, because who’s everybody chasing in this election? I mean, there are a lot of voter groups out there, but one of the key targets for both the right and the left are blue-collar working-class Americans, right?

And so Bernie Sanders is out there with this whole new strategy that he’s going to get these guys that walk and talk like blue-collar Americans. The classic example, Graham Platner, and now his replacement, Troy Jackson, who runs around talking about how he’s a fifth-generation logger. There are candidates that are out there running saying, “I’m a mechanic.”

And so they’re trying to identify with blue-collar workers. But you go and look at every one of their stated agendas. One thing that has never changed: They all are still signed up for the Green New Deal, climate alarmism.

And so these are guys that essentially, if you got them into a policy conversation, they don’t want you to have that diesel truck–not just in the long term, not even in the short term. They want prices to be high.

They still belong to the category out there of activists who say, “Keep it in the ground,” meaning no more fossil fuels.

And the challenge for Republicans is to contrast that with not just the choices and the trade-offs that we’re making in ridding the world of the Iranian nuclear threat, but with Donald Trump’s extraordinary energy agenda, which is designed to drop prices in the long term.

And just this week, they finalized, for instance, new fuel-efficiency rules that are designed to get rid of Biden’s mandate that was going to kill gas-powered and diesel-powered vehicles.

So those are–it’s a choice: lower prices versus the Green New Deal.

Guy Benson: Kim, part of the equation right now, if the Republicans are headed toward a wipeout in November–and I’ve been warning that this should not become a self-fulfilling prophecy on the right–but if dark things lie ahead, a big component of that concoction would be a depressed and unengaged Republican base.

And I saw just earlier today a Democratic pollster out there with his new numbers, and he was saying, “Listen, Democrats have a lead of just five and a half points on the generic ballot among registered voters,” which is again not terrible for them, but it’s not exactly great. I think the Republicans would take a five-and-a-half-point spread in a heartbeat at this point.

He’s saying that’s registered voters, but among likely voters–right, the people engaged, planning to turn out and participate–that number goes up. That advantage goes up by about four, nearly four percentage points.

So the Democrats have a much larger edge among likely voters, north of nine percentage points, he writes. Quote: “I’ve never seen a GOP base more depressed.” And he points to disappointment with Trump, unpopularity of Trump, the war–he’s got several explanatory factors.

But right now, if the Republican base kind of stays in the mindset, in the headspace where they are right now, this could end up being a much bigger blue wave than otherwise it would be. And I wonder how the Republicans snap out of that, if possible.

Kim Strassel: So, the five points that you mentioned–that’s a good night for Democrats. If it’s nine or ten, that is a blue wave. So that’s the difference we’re talking about here.

And by the way, five points is something that is actually something that Republicans can erode away and do better at. Nine points becomes almost out of reach.

The question, and this comes back again once more, is: Imagine what a difference it would make if now, in this last month–we’ve got one month to go, right?–the GOP comes out with a unified new set of promises for what’s going to happen if they’re given two more years in Congress.

Okay? And I don’t know exactly what that is.

Guy Benson: By the way, do you mean not $5,000 checks for everyone?

Kim Strassel: Yeah, not $5,000 checks. I mean, we’re not going to bribe people into going and vote. I mean, that was actually embarrassing and probably counterproductive.

It has to be–I mean, something big that is on Americans’ minds. Yes, you can promise to bring down prices, et cetera, but also, I don’t know, civil-service reform, or maybe instead of just like a headline here or there, an actual set of policies about what Republicans are going to do next about the rampant fraud that is just racing through all entitlement programs, for instance.

Cleaning up government, talking more about the Supreme Court and judicial nominations, what the goal is there. There has to be a sort of proactive agenda, not just fear-mongering.

Guy Benson: When I think back to 2018, which was the first midterm election and the first Trump term, Democrats did have a blue wave. They gained 40 House seats–very good night for them–but they actually lost ground in the Senate. They lost, I believe, a net two Senate seats.

I firmly believe a big part of that was the disgraceful Kavanaugh circus that the Democrats put on that radicalized a bunch of people, myself included, in some of these purple and red states who came out and voted for Republican Senate candidates that year because they were very fired up over the grave, disgusting injustice that they tried to inflict upon now-Justice Kavanaugh.

It was a very ugly, sordid spectacle, and it really ticked off a lot of people. That was a motivating factor.

We don’t have that type of big battle here in 2026. Similarly, at the same time, though, what’s at stake is very much President Trump’s ability to get maybe potentially any nominees through, judicial or otherwise, for two years.

I think Chuck Schumer might just completely shut down that conveyor belt, maybe 90%, 95%, 100%, in the coming years if they win control of the Senate. That’s a very high-stakes thing.

I know Republicans–you’ve written about how they’re racing against the clock to get as many people confirmed before January as possible, just as a backstop to all of that, just in case. But that is at least historically a point that can sort of capture the attention of Republican-leaning voters. Is that a possible message here?

Kim Strassel: Yeah, absolutely, but it has to be done better than it’s being done at the moment.

I mean, the president–or at all, right? There’s been almost nothing on this. Almost nothing.

In some stump speeches, the president says, “Oh, and this is among the list of achievements,” right? Three Supreme Court justices. And it’s also true, by the way, about a third of the federal bench right now is Trump nominees, which has made an enormous difference, especially in certain circuits.

The Ninth Circuit, which was notoriously liberal, is now about half and half Republican- and Democratic-appointed judges. That’s a huge shift.

But he has to be out there–Republicans need to be out there talking about the past four or five years and how things would look differently had it not been for this current Supreme Court, the way it could have gone the wrong direction, and the victories that have been made as a result of this, like reining in the bureaucracy, restoring religious freedom, restoring states’ rights.

This is the stuff that does it, renews and rejuvenates Republican voters and gets them out to the polls.

Guy Benson: Kimberly, about a minute left. I do want to ask you how you think Republicans should be talking about the AI issue, because Democrats are making hay on data centers and that sort of thing, and Republicans are trying to find their footing. Quickly, your thought there.

Kim Strassel: Yeah, I mean, look, they need to stop running scared. I think they’re starting to get themselves together and actually make the proactive argument for this.

It was good to see AI execs stepping up, but they need to be making the point that we cannot lose this race with China, and that this is great for your stock market, great for investment, great for jobs, and just a good thing for your life.

Guy Benson: Kimberly Strassel of the Fox News Channel is a contributor here, an editorial board member of The Wall Street Journal. Check out her weekly column, Potomac Watch. Follow her on social, at Kim Strassel. Read her books.

Kim, we always enjoy this time together. Really appreciate it.