is their optimism warranted? they re on a sugar high [laughter] after doug jones win in alabama and also ralph northam s big win in virginia. but, you know, a lot can happen in ten months. we all know)pá. so i m going to wait and see. i think democrats certainly will pick up seats. it s a midterm election. paul: right. and that normally means the opposition party picks up seats. but when you re looking at the head to head polling right now, democrats have something like an 8-10 point advantage in the polling number of who should run congress. that s a big advantage. they also have a 10-point advantage in enthusiasm with their voters versus republicans. that usually means big pick-ups. yes, if that holds. if that holds, they will win the house, and they might be able to stave off any defeats in the senate which is incredible when you think about it because they re defending 26 seats, 10 of them in states that presidenç
we are back. and steve kornacki is here. because a lot of people are wondering how this week s policy changes are going to ricochet in 2018. and steve, i understand you have reported out an explanation that will make us never have to watch news all of next year. break it down. don t put it that way, ari. it s bad for business. but here s what we ve got. look, you know the polling number on the tax bill this week. not good. and it s sort of a trend here. there have been three things we ve been seeing take shape. three patterns emerged this year that historically at least have been very telling for what happens in the mid-term election. number one the generic congressional battle. which party would you like to see control congress in next year s election? the average of all the polls out there right now has the democrats ahead by double
number, donald trump is a certain kind of charisma that roy moore doesn t have, and roy moore strikes me as a pretty c toxic figure and regional intense figure for national republicans to have to carry around. what do you think of that? i completely agree. he s a guy whose been an edge case in alabama, the reddest state in the country. roy moore is always under performed even people like mitt romney in state-wide races in alabama. so the specificity of roy moore s particular political flavor is not something that you can scale beyond non-metro regions of alabama. that may still be enough to pull him over the finish line tonight but the toxicity of roy moore s brand, the fact that let s not forget roy moore likes is actually attracted to teenage girls, that will stick with him. that will be a problem. if the democrats are disciplined
was a speech that hit all the notes but was this the time to make this particular speech? i agree with john, i think this was his greatest hits. he s playing what worked from the campaign. if john and his speech writing team maybe not the way we would have done it but he s consistently keeping the media after kilter. i think his team wanted three, four, five more days of what he talked about yesterday, some of that good press coverage to be out there. what we re talking about on this desk right now is not what we were talking about a couple weeks ago when i was which is not special council. i think if you look at his polling number you re not going to see the change in those who supported him. the method to his madness is he s got an agenda and a platform he s accompanied on but he s failed time again to deliver it. the new york times came out today reporting that donald trump doesn t have any relationship with mitch mcconnell almost in a month and the last conversation they had,
we ve gone through eight years of a democratic president and then eight years before that of a republican president and during those two four year terms, the upset over the way washington has been working or not working in this case was building. so i think it s a little unreasonable to expect even donald trump to change the way washington works in 100 days. but if at the end of his first year that number is still mired at 40% or lower, he s got g problems and things are coming up like the budget fight for fy 2018 that s going to come around september and at the same time that hap nds, they have to raise the debt ceiling. and i guarantee you that polling number you showed will drop. and 2018 is not that far awai. we re already starting to see 2020 democratic presidential hopefuls sort of dip their toes in the water.