Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
This episode was recorded before Tuesday night’s election results.
Jack Folwer: Well, Victor, as much as people are consumed with domestic elections, we have some recent overseas activity in Israel, in Brazil, in British Columbia. Let’s start with British Columbia. You mentioned a little something about that on a recent podcast with Sami, but maybe it portends what might happen here in the U.S.
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, the polls were… It’s about the provincial governor, our term of governor, that runs the seats in the provincial parliament in, British Columbia, which is, I think, arguably either one of the two top Left… You know, Quebec’s a separate case, but probably top two or three most liberal of the Canadian provinces, and the one that is most affected by immigration, especially from Asia, from India, and China.
And so, it’s considered just—It was gonna be left-wing. It was always left-wing. But the polls said that there might be a little conservative surge, but no one had anticipated that it was a tidal wave.
And for the first time in nearly a century, the Conservatives got an overwhelmingly, successful parliamentary vote, and now they’re running the government, and no one had predicted that.
By the same token, it’s a little hard to talk about Brazil because Bolsonaro, excuse me, I hope I said that right. Flavio was supposed to win. He had won in the primary, and he was supposed to win by four or five points. Reportedly, he was leading, and Lula’s own personal lawyer that he had appointed to the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered the polls to keep open two hours longer, but not nationwide.
So there was the accusation, it’s alleged, that that helped Lula win an election that he wasn’t supposed to. And, of course, the whole Bolsonaro family fled because Lulu will put you in prison if you stay in Brazil. So the polls again were wrong on that if it was an, if it was a valid election.
The polls in Israel were wrong. It’s not that they were way off, but Benjamin was supposed to lose more seats than his rivals. He needed 61. I think by today there’s some … I think he’s down to 53 seats. His opponents have 47. But no one thought that after this election he would have the most seats.
The problem is that his opponents have said they will not deal with the Arab two parties. One is more radical than the other, but combined they own, I think, 19 seats. But now this morning, they said they would, his opposition. So maybe they’ll form a government at a time of war with two parties, one of which is pretty much pro-Hamas.
So that’s kind of scary. But they have one common theme, and that is in all three of these cases, the pollsters missed, missed it.
And I think Harry Enten in CNN had made the statement that he thought the Senate would go 52, 53 Democrats with an asterisk. And he meant that if the polls were wrong at the margin, they have been wrong in the last three elections, the two generals and one midterm, it was around 4 percentage points in favor of the Democrats.
If that were to take effect in this fourth one, then the Republicans would have 52 seats. If the Republicans hold the Senate, and they confine their [House] losses to 15, seats. Remember that Barack Obama lost in his first midterms 60 seats plus, and then in his second midterm, he lost another 13 in his second term.
He lost 13 senators in the first, and I think a few in the second. And when he left office, there was an overwhelming Republican Senate and House, and the same thing happened to Bill Clinton. Just like Obama, he started with a huge lead. People were angry at George H.W. Bush as they had been at George W. Bush.
He came in, I think, with, 258 seat, 57 seats, Clinton did, and Obama came in with 258. Obama came in with, if you count the two socialists that were voting, 59 senators, and both of them lost badly in their first midterms. And Clinton, actually picked up a couple of seats in his second midterm, but he was still not enough.
He and Obama’s last two years, they had gone from overwhelming Democratic majorities to solid Republican majorities.
Now, the point is, I’m not trying to forecast this midterm, but let’s just say that the traditional polls are right, and Trump loses three or four seats in the Senate, and he loses 20 seats, 25 as they say he will.
What’s the net effect? As a historian, all you have to say is what’s been the net effect the last two times that’s happened? You know what’s really strange, Jack, is that Joe Biden had a miserable 2022, if everybody thinks about it. Right before the midterms in the summer of 2022, gas was higher than it is now.
It was $5 without adjusting for inflation, much higher than it is now nationwide. And the GDP was lower than it is now, and the inflation got up to 9.1 that year. So it was three times the inflation. So what am I getting at? We’re told that Trump is going to lose the election because of a war and gas and inflation.
And I’m telling you, in the 2022 supposed red wave, Biden had higher gas prices, and the inflation rate was three times that rate that year, and there was, a war. Well, I shouldn’t say higher gas prices. It got up to $5, but by the time of the midterms, it was about where it is now, four something.
And he didn’t actually get us in a war, but it was even worse in some ways. I think whatever you say about Iran, we’ve lost about 22 people. We’ve spent $45 billion. That $45 billion we’ve spent in Iran is less than what we turned over to the Taliban under Biden right before the midterms in August. It was only a year before, 2021.
He turned over a billion-dollar embassy, which is still in their hands, locked or in their possession. He turned over the Balad Air Force Base that we had just invested 300 or 400 million in. He turned over, and this is infrastructure, he turned over equipment, he turned over weapons.
Even if it isn’t as high as the $60 billion that people were tossing around, it was the arms market, it being the storehouse that we left behind that’s fueled terrorism all over the world, probably at least as much as we’ve spent in Iran if you take the infrastructure and the buildings.
And then closer to the 2022 midterms, they invaded in 2022, they being the Russians. And they invaded because of the humiliation that we had in Afghanistan that destroyed deterrence because Biden had put a hold on $100 million of offensive weapons that the Congress approved for Ukraine. He stopped it.
He said to Vladimir Putin, “If you’re going to…” Basically, he said, “If you’re going to hack our cyber system, please don’t hack hospitals and nonprofit,” stuff like that.
And then he said his reaction to a putative invasion by Russia would depend on whether it was a minor or major invasion.
What I’m getting at is with all, with worse economic news, with worse gas prices, and with a worse foreign policy situation he picked up one Senate seat, and he only lost nine House seats.
And the Left was exuberant. I went back and looked this morning at it. They said this was a victory. Yes, he lost the House, but the margins are so small, and the Republicans cannot enforce discipline and now we have whittled down their Senate margin to almost nothing and da, da, da, da, da.
So what I’m getting at is the only thing I can see is different, Jack is I went back and looked at some of the news accounts. They said the economy was booming in the third quarter under Biden. It was 3.2.
Well, the economy then is really booming because now we just learned that the third quarter was actually 3.4, and there’s estimates that might, estimates that might be five, but they’re not talking about a boom now.
The inflation rate was three times higher. They said it was a bump. I looked at an article by Janet Yellen. Remember, she said, “This is just temporary. Don’t worry.” Gas prices, they said, are going down because he went to the Arabs. That didn’t work and asked them to pump more. But he did drain 40% of the strategic reserve to get it down from five to about four ten or something.
But it was still high. But the difference was the media said it was great. Everything was going great. Don’t worry about Russia. Don’t worry about the skedaddle from Afghanistan. But it’s just a … What I’m getting at is if [Trump] loses the midterms, it’s not because the economy or gas or wars were different than Biden.
It’s because they have been interpreted by the media as existential, one-of-a-kind, worst-thing-in-history events. Affordability. The other thing, which I think is the real reason there’s unpopularity, is Joe Biden raised prices by 21%. Twenty-one percent. So if you wanted to buy a dollar banana when he came into office, it was a $1.21.
Trump came in, and he immediately stopped that 5.1 average over four years to 2.3 the first year, and now it’s gonna be about 3.4. Still lower, but nobody’s talking about that. Nobody’s saying, “Donald Trump’s got 3.4, GDP. He’s got the highest per family, per capita family income.
He’s got the lowest poverty rate. We’re growing at 3.4, and it’s gonna go…” No, no. They’re saying that prices are unaffordable. But nobody says they’re unaffordable because Biden raised them 21%, or they’re not saying, I don’t even think they’re saying this, Jack. “Well, Donald Trump should have lowered them, so we should have had minus 5% inflation the first …”
And if anybody can tell me when that happened without a severe recession, I’d like to know So there was a miscommunication. It was the media, but it was also the administration didn’t get it out, what they were trying to do. And they’re trying now to, but it’s very… And we’ll see what happens.
They’re playing catch-up. I think they’re gaining. And one final observation. As I said, when Bill Clinton in eight years, his lowest approval rating was 38.5. Obama’s was 38. When they got wiped out and lost the House and the Senate, their ratings went up. In the last two years, Bill Clinton got an enormous amount of empathy for two reasons.
One, he went to Newt Gingrich and he said, “Let’s continue working. We have two historic balanced budgets, ’98, ’97 and ’98 — excuse me, ’98, and we’re forecast for ’99. Let’s go for 2000 and 2001.” And they did.
There was even an article I saw that people were worried that we were paying off the debt too quickly, and it might affect bonds.
There wouldn’t be an availability of government bonds. So that everybody was happy about that. And Gingrich didn’t get the credit that Clinton did, but that was something.
And then the second they tried to impeach Bill Clinton when the economy was growing at 3%. And so that didn’t work. And Bill Clinton left office with 60% approval rating in 2001 in January.
Did losing the House and Senate affect him at all? I don’t think it did. He ballyhooed his big Palestinian peace summit that he had. He went into Serbia. Did he ask for congressional approval? No. Did he bomb? Yes, 77 days. Did he hit bridges on the Danube? Yes. Did he knock out the power grid some days? Yes.
He did what he wanted. Obama, the same thing. After the debacle over Obamacare, the one vote, the wipeout in the 2010 midterms, he got down to 37.5. To see Obama talk and to look at him prance around, people didn’t like him. Then he got clobbered. He won the election, but he didn’t do well in the Congress in 2012.
He got clobbered again in 2014. He lost as many seats in the modern period in the House as anybody. And what did he do? And the state legislatures too were, were wiped out. And this—Oh, yes, 14—nationwide, 1,400 seats in state legislatures and federal seats. OK. So now he’s president in 2014. And what is he doing?
He’s on the golf course. He’s wearing his cutoffs. He’s wearing his shades. He’s giving his, “Well, hell,” you know, that just, those empty speeches. His popularity went from a low of 37.5 all the way over 60. Over 60. And what did he do? He did anything he pleased. He said, “I got a pen and I got a phone, and I’m gonna, you know, they’re not gonna work with me.”
And he didn’t work with them, and they didn’t work with him. And he signed the Iran deal, which was a disaster. He airlifted $400 million in cash on a pallet for the Iranians at night so we couldn’t see it, and it was a treaty.
And he [said], “I’m a constitutional lawyer. I don’t have to, I don’t have to, you know, I don’t have to go to the Senate.”
He didn’t go to the Senate. And then he went into the Paris climate accord, that disastrous thing. Public opinion didn’t want that. And then he recognized Cuba. He recognized them and lifted the sanctions.
So my point is, he didn’t have any Congress. They were opposed to all of that, and he started issuing hundreds of executive orders.
So if Trump should lose I think it won’t affect his foreign policy one iota. It’ll affect his ability to confirm judges and appointees if he has to replace [any]. That’s important. In the House, it will do what they did to Clinton and what they did during Trump’s first term. They will impeach Donald Trump.
There’s no doubt about it. Maybe once, maybe twice, they’ll impeach some Cabinet. Will they get convicted? No, because they’re not going to win 60 seats.
So it will be a performance-art virtue signaling.
One last, observation. When these presidents lost their majorities and they went into their last two years, why did their opinion polls go up?
One, they weren’t restricted. They’d kept doing what they wanted. Two, there was a campaign started. So in the case of Bill Clinton, it was Al Gore versus George W. Bush, and it had already started, and they were going at it.
But in the case of Barack Obama, it was even more visceral. It was Hillary Clinton and Trump back and forth in 2016 and to some extent in 2015.
And so these two presidents just said, “I’m above the fray. I’m a statesman. I’m working on foreign policy. I’m not gonna get involved with Hillary’s campaign. I’m not gonna get involved.” Remember Al Gore got really angry, and he made a colossal error because of the adultery and the Monica [Lewinsky] thing? Bill Clinton was popular, and he would not campaign with him against Bush.
And remember that, Jack? People said to him-
Jack Folwer: Yes…
Victor Davis Hanson: “Are you crazy?” I think Mark Penn, Doug Schoen, and everybody said, “Why don’t you campaign? He’s at 55% approval. The economy’s booming.” And Gore, I think, was a narcissist megalomania. They all are, but he especially, and he wouldn’t campaign, and people were kind of sympathetic to Bill Clinton of all people.
Jack Folwer: Yeah…
Victor Davis Hanson: So once that campaign starts in a president’s lame-duck years, he plays, he’s just kind of the president. The more you saw of Obama, the more you heard him, the less you liked him. The less you saw him and the less you heard him, the more you liked him. And then his team went with the propaganda, serious diplomacy of the Iran deal, landmark thing of the climate accord, revolutionary act with Cuba, and people didn’t even follow it.
They liked him at that point because he was harmless. Trump, I don’t know if that’ll happen with him, but he will not be affected in foreign policy. He won’t be able to, if he loses the Senate, appoint anybody. But then Obama and Clinton didn’t get anybody really passed too much in their last two years.
So we’ll see. I think there’s a 50… I think it’s 55% the Republicans have a chance to keep the Senate, and I think it’s 45, 55 they might lose the House.
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