Eight Tuesdays out, Chuck Todd and Chris Cillizza open on the first midterm convention in modern American history — two nights at Dallas's American Airlines Center with 109 speakers, Trump appearing both nights, and House members getting billed $25,000 to attend. The guys are skeptical of nearly all of it: the event lands on NFL kickoff night, it butts up against the 25th anniversary of September 11th, and Politico found 45 of 70 Republican candidates and members skipping it. Their sharper point is that the whole thing is a microcosm of the party's bind — you cannot win without the MAGA base, and you cannot win with only the MAGA base — which is why swing-state nominees like Jon Husted and Mike Rogers will show up and try very hard to deliver a forgettable speech. Chuck argues nationalizing the election isn't crazy on its own terms, since the other side is going to run against Trump anyway, but doubts Trump can hit any register besides red meat, and doubts even more that he can find a second gear for the September 11th anniversary the following day.
From there they dig into Texas, where MAGA Inc's first $10 million buy is running a half-negative, half-positive ad about taxes — a signal, Chuck says, that they know the target is suburban Romney Republicans, not the base. He walks through Greg Abbott's steadily declining margins, the four-to-eight-point scandal penalty that history says attaches to a candidate like Paxton, and lands somewhere that surprises Chris: he now likes Talarico's odds better than Sherrod Brown's in Ohio. They check the prediction markets, unpack the Missouri Supreme Court ruling that blocked the Republican-drawn map and effectively hands Emanuel Cleaver his seat back, and take apart Trump's request that the Supreme Court impose a national check on mail voting — a policy every Republican strategist will tell you privately hurts their own side. Then a long, unsparing conversation about the Wall Street Journal's reporting on John Fetterman and what it means for control of the Senate on January 3rd, a real case for a third Senate conference built around Murkowski and a possible independent, and a closing riff on Nick Saban, Pat McAfee, and why the Protect College Sports Act is doomed without collective bargaining.
Timeline:
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00:00 Eight Tuesdays out — and why they actually prepare for these now
03:00 The first midterm convention since the early '80s
04:00 $25,000 a head, and Tim Burchett's surprise invoice
05:00 It lands on the opening night of the NFL season
07:00 The Trump trap — you can't afford to say no
08:00 Nationalizing the election isn't the crazy part
11:00 The convention as a microcosm of the GOP's whole problem
13:00 "Trumpapalooza" — so what's the actual message?
14:00 Conventions aren't for swing voters, and never have been
16:00 Husted, Rogers & the art of the deliberately forgettable speech
19:00 Trump as TV producer — and the 9/11 anniversary the next day
20:00 Will he turn the 25th anniversary into a political speech?
23:00 MAGA Inc's first $10M buy lands in Texas
26:00 They tried calling Talarico weird. It didn't take.
27:00 Trump throws Paxton under the bus in the Oval
29:00 Abbott's slipping margins and the blue tsunami scenario
31:00 South Texas Latinos appear to be shifting back
33:00 Clinton lost Texas by less than she lost Iowa in 2016
34:00 Blue-collar trade unions and the industrial Midwest problem
38:00 Trump asks the Supreme Court for a national mail-voting check
39:00 The rural voters his own rule would punish hardest
42:00 Democrats at 85-88% to take the House
43:00 The Missouri ruling
46:00 Why this is anti-voter, full stop
47:00 The Senate sits at 52-48 Republican. A year ago it was 71-29.
49:00 Alaska, and Dan Sullivan's troubling primary numbers
51:00 The Wall Street Journal's Fetterman story
54:00 The practical stakes: who controls the Senate on January 3rd
55:00 Does Fetterman leave the party?
58:00 He's already built the intellectual case for walking
1:00:00 January 3rd is the whole ballgame
1:02:00 Osborn, Bodner, Banks and the independent wave
1:03:00 The real case for a third Senate conference
1:05:00 Saban and McAfee push the Protect College Sports Act
1:07:00 No labor at the table means it dies in court
1:08:00 Ashley Moody's quiet ACC poison pill
1:12:00 The Nats chase the blown-save record. Sell the team.
1:13:00 Dynastic: Finebaum on why Alabama may not run it back
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