All Things with Kim Strassel: The Ones Who Got it Right in 2024
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Welcome to All Things with Kim Strassel, a Wall Street Journal podcast and our end of the year episode. This is All Things with Kim Strassel, a Wall Street Journal podcast.

This has been an exciting year for us, launching this podcast in the run-up to a seriously consequential election and getting to talk to some of the biggest newsmakers of the cycle. And in commemoration of that launch and year, we've decided we would use this final 2024 podcast to highlight portions of interviews with prior guests who, in retrospect,

laid out points that proved to be absolutely key to the election results we saw in November. And we're going to start with some observations from Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who we interviewed at the end of October as he was on the road campaigning for re-election against Democrat Colin Allred.

This is Cruz talking about what Republicans needed to do to connect with key voting groups. How big of a problem is it for Republicans? They don't always have the best spending record. And do you feel like when you go out there and you talk to this, some voters are like both parties are as bad as each other? Well, there's certainly that sentiment. You know, I will say the Dallas Morning News, sadly, like all the

big papers in Texas is a hard left paper. The Dallas Morning News has endorsed against me in every race I've ever run, including in every primary I've ever run. Last time they endorsed a primary opponent who got 2% in the polls. So I can't say voters were terribly concerned about their view. I understand they don't like conservatives. That's their view, and that's the view of all the editorial boards in Texas. I will say I wish we had a Wall Street Journal in Texas.

Sadly, we do not. And Manhattan gets the journal. By the way, Kim, if you could suggest moving the journal to Texas, we would welcome you with open arms. You know, we're opening a Texas Wall Street in Dallas. It would sure be nice to have the journal come join us. It will be my top issue in our next editorial board meeting. We will throw the biggest barbecue and Tex-Mex party with free margaritas you've ever seen. All right. We're going to hold you to that. All right.

But look, on the substance, yes, people are fed up with both parties. They're fed up with the spending. They're fed up with the out-of-control debt that is bankrupting our party. And you and I have sat down and talked about it before. It is a bipartisan problem on any multi-trillion dollar spending bill.

You get all of the Democrats and you get about half the Republicans. And there are about 20 of us who are fiscal conservatives who want to stop this insane spending binge. And right now, we simply don't have the votes. And I think people are frustrated with that. You know, I will say it is amusing that the Dallas Morning News echoed Colin Allred's talking points about being bipartisan in every paper in Texas.

repeats those talking points. He bases it on this nonprofit group that ranks members of Congress for bipartisanship. And I was very puzzled when I heard that this group had ranked him as the most bipartisan in Texas, because as I said, the guy's voting record is 100% with Nancy Pelosi. So how the hell are you bipartisan if you're voting 100% with Nancy Pelosi?

And so I went and looked at this group and who they were, and their board consists of a bunch of Democratic donors who give to Democrats to get elected. And they say right on their website that in making their rankings, they don't actually look at how you vote. It doesn't matter how you vote. They don't care how you vote. All they look to is the words you say if you sound bipartisan.

If you stand up and say, let's be bipartisan, and then you vote like a hard left radical, they'll say, as they did with Colin Allred, you're the most bipartisan member of the delegation. It really is a joke. And what he points to, and those two bills are a good example, are bills that every single Democrat votes for, including Nancy Pelosi.

and a handful of Republicans. And he says, see, I voted with Pelosi and all the Democrats with a few Republicans. Look how bipartisan I am. It really is laughable. And I'll mention on something like you mentioned chips and sciences. So that's actually worth drilling down a little bit more on. So the chips and sciences bill was actually several bills combined together. One of it was the FABs bill, which

which I was a co-sponsor of and a strong supporter of, and it improved the tax treatment for building new semiconductor manufacturing plants in America. I strongly support that. I very much think we need much more semiconductor manufacturing capability in the U.S. The final bill included also $60 billion in direct taxpayer payments

to giant companies. And I think corporate welfare is a bad idea. I think history has shown that when we give billions of dollars of taxpayer monies to giant corporations, bad things happen. It invites corruption. So I voted against the final bill because I didn't like the direct payments to the giant corporations. But, and here's the interesting thing, Kim, we're not right now seeing multiple new semiconductor fabs being built in Texas. And they're running into massive delays

with environmental permitting. The delays are delaying the plants three, four, five years. So I teamed up with Mark Kelly, Democrat from Arizona, on legislation to streamline the environmental permitting for new semiconductor manufacturing. In our legislation, Kelly-Cruz, we passed it out of the Senate unanimously. And then just about a month ago in the House, I went to the House floor to whip the votes. We needed to get two-thirds of the votes on the House to have it carried.

We got two thirds, we got, I think 77 Democrats voted for my bill. It passed into law and very quietly Joe Biden signed it into law. He didn't hold a signing ceremony, didn't want anyone to know he was signing my bill, but that bill will be regulatory reform, lessening the regulatory burden on building new semiconductor plants. I actually think that's how a principled free market conservative helps bring jobs and also helps on the national security imperative

of new semiconductor manufacturing. Agreed. And we need a lot more of that permitting reform across all kinds of industries. If I remember correctly, I believe those direct handouts also ended up coming with a bunch of strings attached in terms of workforces. And that's also delayed a lot of that as well, too. So early voting started this week in Texas. And apparently you are getting record breaking early turnout. I'm not a huge fan myself of early voting. I'd like to

return us to a time when we all showed up to the polls on the big day. But are you out there encouraging your voters to vote early? And what do you think those huge numbers mean? Do you think it means a bigger turnout? Do you think more Republicans are voting early this time, more Democrats? What do you think that signifies? So I am encouraging people to vote early. And I'll tell you, in Texas, the way it works, we've done this for a while this way, and it works well.

which is we have two weeks of early voting, but it's in-person early voting. So you go to the polls and you vote in person. We have a little bit of mail-in voting, but that's for seniors and people with serious disabilities. So it's not widely used.

The vast bulk of the early voting is just like Election Day, but it's the two weeks beforehand. So yesterday was the first day of early voting. I went and voted yesterday. And it's easier because the lines are shorter. It took 15 minutes for me to vote. We did see a huge turnout yesterday, the highest that's ever been recorded. I think we're going to see the highest turnout we've ever had. We've got two weeks of early voting. I think it is likely that

60 to 70 percent of the total vote in Texas will be cast early, and then you'll get 30 to 40 percent of the vote cast on election day. Now, the good news is, unlike some other states, some blue states who can't seem to figure out how to run an election, we'll know the results in Texas by election night. It may be

10, 11 o'clock at night if it's close, but we'll know that night. We'll count the ballots and be done with it. I think that's the way it should be done. But I think it's huge turnout. And we're focused really on two things. One, turning out our voters. But number two, working on persuasion, really targeting swing voters. Many of them are suburban women. They are women who

historically have voted Republican, but who are not terribly huge fans of Donald Trump's rhetoric. And so we have been trying to convey messaging to them of, look, the issues you care about, you don't like inflation, you don't like what's happening with the economy, you don't like this invasion of illegal immigrants, and do you really want a Venezuelan gang member moving in next door to you and threatening your kids? Just how much do you dislike mean tweets? And that

I hope we can bring some of those voters back. I think we can. I'm seeing signs that we'll turn out the blue collar voters that more and more have become the base of the Republican Party, but also see some of those suburban voters who had drifted from the party come back. And if we do that, we're going to have a very good election night. We're going to take a break. Next up, Tim Sheehy.

Welcome back. I'm Kim Strassel. Let's tune back into another Republican who won his Senate race. In October, we also talked to Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and businessman who challenged longtime Montana Democrat John Tester to his Senate seat and also won by seven points. This is Sheehy talking about Montana's changing electorate and how all problems can be local.

Montana is fascinating because obviously a lot of split ticket voters. It has shifted. Trump did win the state by 16 points four years ago. And that means that there are a number of voters

in Montana who are going to the polls and during the presidential, they're voting for a Republican, but they are voting consistently for a Democratic senator. Now, one thing that is different this time around, I'd love to get your take on whether or not you think it will make a difference. John Tester hasn't been on the ballot during a presidential race since 2012.

So he's never run alongside Donald Trump on a ballot. But those people that are the split ticket voters, how are you reaching them? How are you trying to find them and convince them? Is it just about shaking hands, getting them to let them know you? Or are there specific things that in the past have made them want to vote for a Democrat? And how do you convince them otherwise?

Yeah, a couple of things there. And it's a great point because I mean, that is the election. So you just honed in on the election, which is making sure people understand what they're voting for. And I think there's a few issues there that we got to unpack. Number one is the expertly crafted political image that Jon Tester has. Number one, he's a talented politician, but also guess what? They've spent about $150 million, $200 million across every election cycle building this image around him, too. So it's not just that he's good at it. He also has massive resources every time.

But, you know, he's part of the Lucky Calendar Club, was elected in '06, '12 and '18. '06 was a great year for Democrats. '12 was too. '18 was a great year for Democrats. And honestly, a lot of people, especially a lot of our low information voters, actually think John Tess is a Republican. He doesn't go out there and say, "I'm a Democrat." He basically runs like Trump Republican, just like Bob Casey now and Slotkin. You know, he's running ads touting how he works with President Trump, even though, of course, he voted to impeach him twice.

So I think the split ticket voting nationwide, as you alluded to, is becoming less common. But also, you know, he's had favorable tailwinds every time he's been on the ballot where he hasn't had to differentiate himself from the Republican candidate that much. You know, when Mitt Romney ran against Obama in 12, that wasn't a decisive win here in Montana. He won a few points, but it wasn't a 16 to 20 point landslide like we see with Trump.

So, you know, this time it is proving much, much harder for him to differentiate himself from the Democrats on the ticket when he's running against Trump. And of course, the fact that since the last election, he's voted to impeach Trump twice and of course, voted for everything the Biden-Harris administration rolled out for him. And that's another important point, Kim, to remember is, you know, these last three and a half years in the Senate where it's been a razor thin Democrat majority with the vice president and of course, with Manchin and Sinema sometimes defecting, he hasn't been able to hide

behind messaging bills this time because they've needed his vote every single time and he's provided it every single time we haven't dead to rights on a voting record that he just cannot run from no matter how he tries so you know he'll throw up distractions and scandals and lies and smear and all that and all i have to say is okay well that's untrue but guess what he voted with by inheritance administration every time voted impeach trump twice does that sound like a moderate to you and pretty quickly folks come back to reality on that so

He's never been elected in such a challenging electoral environment as this, where Montanans who are, although they're independent and kind of libertarian by nature, they want conservative policies right now. Clearly, they want conservative policies on the national level. On that policy front, he's understandably trying to make

this race a little bit more local. Talk about local issues, farming, public lands use, housing. And that's something a lot of Democratic candidates are doing right now. Understandably, obvious reasons because they're trying to distance themselves from unpopular national president and national policies. You've talked much more about those bigger issues, inflation, immigration, interest rates. What is dominating their

Or is it that these national issues have actually become in many ways local issues, for instance, immigration? You hit the nail on the head. And again, I'm a first time politician, never run for student council or county commission. So, you know, I've jumped right in the deep end here, but I'm learning as I'm learning. And I'll tell you, growing up, you always hear the adage, all politics is local. And I think that adage is true.

But guess what? National policies are having devastating local effects. So I think all politics are local. But guess what? Those local impacts like three fifty dollar gasoline a gallon, expensive groceries, crime in the street, human trafficking, expensive housing. Those issues are the result of failed national policies of this administration.

They're trying to divert it to other boutique local issues. But, you know, we just keep dragging it back to the fact that these local issues, you want to talk about housing prices, John Tester? Great. Let's talk about housing prices. Let's talk about massive inflation, highest interest rates in a generation, the inability to get labor and to get materials to build homes because of these idiotic economic policies.

of this administration. And of course, let's talk about immigration, which is something that's so rarely talked about when we discuss housing prices. They always want to blame developers and banks and all that. I'm sure I'm blamed plenty to go around, but we've also had an unprecedented influx

of people coming into this country like so we've never seen so fast. And when you inject the scary things, we don't even know the number 10 to 20 million of people of demand, two to three to four to five percent demand increase in three and a half years into an inelastic market economic supply and demand when the supply is basically inelastic, which housing is probably one of the most inelastic supply sides of any equation in the modern

economy and you inject a ton of demand into it right away, unforecasted, unpredicted, that's going to drive housing costs up, which it has nationwide. And when they want to blame it in Montana on, you know, rich out of staters and vacationers, okay, they may have a bit of influence, but how about we talk about the fact that we've added 20 million people of demand and what are those people are high income or not? They need a roof over their head.

And that will drive up demand and drive up prices. So I think the housing argument that a lot of these Democrats are trying to run to just falls flat because people rightfully point to the administration in charge during that housing crisis. And guess what? It's been Democrats, which they voted for. And then other local issues, you mentioned public lands, which obviously being from Alaska, you understand that, you know, our Western states, especially Alaska, but Montana as well, like Nevada is 97 percent federal. And, you know, here in Montana, we're about a third federal land. So not quite as much, but still very significant.

One of the run to home base issues for Democrats running in Montana is always public lands. They want to accuse the Republicans of plotting a secret plot to sell off public lands for money, which, of course, that's ridiculous. It's never been proposed. It's never been written about. It's simply something that they love to throw out there because they know that the conservative hunters and fishers

that could be split ticket voters. Oh, my favorite fishing spot? Sure. He's going to sell that? Oh, no, I better vote for the Democrat because he's going to save it. Even though, you know, some of our Republican leaders have presided over some of the most expansive public lands policy ever. So it's flat out untrue. The people have pretty much digested that. And I think that one falls flat, too. But I think you're right. It's fascinating to see these Democrat Senate candidates scramble for a message that resonates because they can't

hitch their wagon to the coattails of Joe Biden and they can't hitch their wagon to the coattails of these failed policies. So they got to make up distractions, which is, you know, it's what they're doing. Once again, that was Republican Tim Sheehy, one of a dozen new faces in the Senate who's coming in January, six new Republicans and six new Democrats. Next up, we're going to look back to interviews with Scott Rasmussen and Ralph Reed when we come back from the break.

From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast. Welcome back. I'm Kim Strassel of All Things. And next, we're going to go way back to August when two of our guests in separate interviews made some pretty bold predictions about turnout, about changes in boating demographics,

and about what might prove to be a sleeper issue of this election, and they nailed it. Those guests were pollster and researcher Scott Rasmussen and Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Is it mostly an enthusiasm question? Is it mostly, like you said, getting those voters back on board? Or is she actually changing hearts and minds, pulling people over to her side?

It's mostly enthusiasm and reclaiming that Democratic base. You know, there were a lot of people who could never vote for Donald Trump and then who saw Joe Biden in that debate and thought, I can't imagine this for four more years. So some of those people came back. One way I described it is with Biden in the race, it was like the Democrats were coming to bat in the bottom of the ninth down by about seven runs. You know, there's virtually no chance of winning. When Harris jumped in,

it was like they were down by a run going into the bottom of the ninth. Still a little bit of an uphill fight, but very plausible to see a path to victory. On the issues question, obviously inflation, interest rates,

the economy, immigration, crime. Are those the things you are seeing that's still where people are most focused on? Are there any sleeper issues out there that you've noticed, cultural questions that you think can really resonate? Just are the campaigns hitting on the right themes? Well, every week we ask an open-ended question about what's the most important issue.

And every week of this year, the top issues have either been inflation or other economic concerns. The other option is immigration is always there in the top three. Now, among Democrats, abortion is a very important issue. It's not among the rest of the electorate. And on that issue, that's something that can help with turnout for the Democrats.

I think the sleeper issues, you can never tell what's going to pop, but there are a number of cultural issues out there that could cause trouble for the progressive Democrats. One that comes to mind because of some recent events is the question of biological males competing in women's sports.

Only about 14% of voters think that should be allowed. Only 21% of Harris voters think biological males should be allowed to compete in women's sports.

But very few people know that Kamala Harris is supportive of that policy. So perhaps things like that could emerge that would give the sense that she's a somewhat radical progressive Democrat, but it wouldn't be the issue per se as the impression it gave of Vice President Harris.

Those are some extraordinary numbers. Talk about an issue that has cross-party appeal. Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. What does your ground game look like this year? Well, it's the most expansive and ambitious, not only in our history, Kim, but in the history of the pro-family movement. We will knock on 10 million doors of change.

Self-identified evangelicals and modeled social conservatives in the battleground states will reach between 17 and 18 million voters at the door because the industry standard is you have somewhere between 1.6 and 2 registered voters in each of those households. They will get emails. They will get phone calls that are timed before and after the door knock.

If they are a low propensity voter that has voted in one or fewer of the last three elections, they'll get at least two door knocks. We will send out 28 million get out the votes text messages. We will put 30 million voter guides in 113,000 churches nationwide that detail where the candidates stand on all the key issues, not just the moral issues that we're talking about, but taxes, the economy, and

inflation, the border, etc. We want them to be educated on a wide range of issues because they vote on those issues. They're not all single issue voters. They care about the economy. They care about the border. So it's a total of 221 million voter contacts. Goodness. Focused on

about 30 million voters in those battleground states. And if we do what our after action analysis in prior elections, both primary and general, have indicated, the full mix of these multiple touches, and it will be 8 to 12 touches to each household or voter, we believe we can lift their turnout at a

minimum of 5% and perhaps as much as 10%. And when we do that, it will be more than the margin needed in every one of these battleground states. Yeah, that was a question I had when you say 5% to 10%. How many voters are you talking about there?

Some of that is proprietary. I'm not necessarily published my playbook. See, I'm asking the right questions, right? Yes, you are. But I'm not going to give out what our databases are in individual battleground states. But suffice it to say that when you're talking about an election, Kim, that we believe will be decided by 5, 10, 20, 30,000 votes,

in three to five states just the lift in turnout among these voters alone will be more than the margins separating biden and trump in most of these battleground states four years ago is it giving anything away to just say obviously all the battlegrounds matter right but

Are there some where the evangelical vote is going to matter more or where there's simply more of them and it could be more decisive in a victory? Well, I certainly think that's the case in Georgia. It has one of the highest shares of an evangelical vote.

of any battleground, it's likely to be somewhere between 34 and 35% the entire electorate. And by the way, when Brian Kemp was last on the ballot, which was in 2022, he won 91% of that vote. So if something like that were to happen again, it would clearly tip the state as it did for him in '22. I would say behind that,

Probably Pennsylvania. And in Pennsylvania, Kim, it wouldn't just be the self-identified evangelicals. It would be what I refer to as the Bob Casey Catholics. Yep. Pro-life, faithful, frequently mass attending. You know, that is...

right at about a million and a half to a million seven hundred thousand votes. Those two groups together in Pennsylvania. And if they turn out on the numbers they're capable of, and our program is going to ensure that they do,

I think that will be probably second only to Georgia in terms of the seismic role that evangelicals are going to play. I'll mention one last thing about this program that you won't usually see reported. And that is that 20 percent of the doors that we knock on in the homes that we visit will be minority households.

And one of the big stories in 2024, I believe, is going to be the shift among minority voters of faith and especially among Hispanics. Even after this surge that Harris has enjoyed since Biden stepped aside, and there's no question that the enthusiasm gap has narrowed, that the polling has narrowed. This is now a jump ball. But even with that, in

In most of the national polling, Donald Trump is either leading among Hispanic voters or it's within the margin of error. And that could have huge consequences in November. It's one of the reasons why I think he may win Nevada. It's one of the reasons why New Mexico is in play. And there are many other states with a huge number of Hispanic voters, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, where they're going to be a factor.

Again, that was president of RMG Research, Scott Rasmussen, and Faith and Freedom Coalition founder, Ralph Reed. And I and Kim Strassel hosted this weekly podcast who would like to thank all the guests who came on the show this year and the thousands of people who tuned in and helped make it a success. We're looking forward to an even brighter 2025. If you like the show, please hit the subscribe button. And if you'd like to get in touch, you can write to us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. Thank you.