What an incredible few days it has been. You know, we record this on a Thursday, it typically airs on Sunday and Monday, and I need to say that because we’re gonna talk about some things that maybe by the time this is on TV Monday will have changed. We don’t think they will. But we’ll go ahead and cover everything that has been happening politically speaking in recent days, including the winners and the losers from Tuesday’s midterm elections. A House and Senate divide, you saw what happened there. We sorta knew it would. And then the important question, what happens next? And we’re gonna do it with our political expert.

Part 1

Brad Means: We are so close to calling him a member of the Channel 6 team. He’s already a member of the family. But an official, all we need to do is just pay him ’cause he’s so good to us, Dr. Craig Albert, Augusta University, expert on all things political. Great teacher, great friend, and we appreciate you being here.

Dr. Craig Albert: Love being here, thanks for having me.

Brad Means: Thank you, and it’s been a long week for you, too. I wanna lead off with the governors race because that’s what everyone’s been talking about. In the state of Georgia, it looks like Kemp has more votes but Abrams thinks maybe that once everything is counted or recounted, she can get to a runoff. Your thoughts?

Dr. Craig Albert: I think Kemp has officially won at this point. That hasn’t been certified, but he’s at about 60,000, 65,000 votes ahead of Stacey Abrams right now. All the absentee ballots are accounted for. There may be a few laying out there, but, there’s not any large surplus out there. Right now it’s just the provisional ballots that need to be counted, and maybe some leftover votes in Fulton County, Forscythe, these areas around Atlanta. She would have to, Abrams would have to get about 20,000 to 25,000 more votes, without Kemp accumulating anymore from those provisional ballots for her to force his totals to fall belong 50%. He’s at about 50.2% so it’s possible. 20,000, 25,000 is not that many votes when you think about 4,000,000 voters. But the idea is that nobody really knows how many are still out there that are unaccounted for. So she has a chance that she could force a runoff because in Georgia, if no candidate gets above 50%, it’s an automatic runoff between the two highest vote-getters.

Brad Means: Well you can’t fault her, can you? Or anybody, if you’re within 0.2%, you have to go for it. You have to challenge it.

Dr. Craig Albert: I think both are doing perfect strategy for politics right now. Kemp has declared victory. That’s exactly what he should have done after a few hours, making sure the absentee ballots came in properly and everything. Also remember, he’s Secretary of State, so he has to be cautious about how and what he says regarding that, because he has to speak as Secretary of State Kemp versus Candidate Kemp when he’s dealing with how many votes are still out there and everything, so he doesn’t wanna blur the lines. And of course, Candidate Abrams as well. Absolutely, she should absolutely keep fighting, keep going for it. She’s so close and in the state of Georgia, that’s even more reason for her to keep this going as long as it seems logical to do so.

Brad Means: Should he step aside since he’s the guy who certifies these elections? Should he step aside because of the potential, not potential, because of the, well, should he step aside?

Dr. Craig Albert: I think it would behoove him to do so. You know, when, in political science or just in politics, why would you do anything that might ever cast doubt upon something or maybe even smell of being unethical? In my mind, you just wanna avoid that whatsoever. Now I’m not saying that he’s unethical or anything.

Brad Means: Sure.

Dr. Craig Albert: But why would you ever even allow that argument to be made? He has a team under him in the Secretary of State’s office that can keep doing that. It would be a big deal if is cast aside so that everything seems that it’s okay and legitimate. So I think that is something he might do, especially if he goes to a runoff. He will have to do that because he can’t fit and fundraise if it goes to a runoff. So he will have to step down if he wants to compete.

Brad Means: If he wins, is he the last Republican governor of Georgia we’ll see for a while?

Dr. Craig Albert: This is close. Atlanta is burgeoning and it’s burgeoning blue, so as it expands, as we have urban sprawl, there’s more suburban neighborhoods, it’s turning bluer and bluer. That vote is gonna surpass the rest of Georgia in its entirety, so when we get to 2020, I think 2020 might be just the way this year is, especially the presidential election. We’re gonna be purpling as I like to say. I don’t think it’ll be officially purple. By 2024, I think all bets are off and Georgia will be up for grabs.

Brad Means: Are Democrats moving to our state, or are we just raising more Democrats these days?

Dr. Craig Albert: Both. Atlanta’s becoming such a hip city, and Augusta’s becoming more of a hip city. What happens when that occurs is you have a more diverse, more inclusive population that comes here. Higher education levels, higher wealth levels, and so you have all kinds of individuals moving in the state of Georgia. So we’re now looking like, you know, a miniature silicon valley, a miniature New York City because we have all types of tech industries here now. We were a big competitor to get Amazon’s headquarters in Atlanta. In Augusta, we have the Cyber Center. We have the cyber building. Everything cyber is coming here. That’s a different type of individual than Georgia’s used to that’s gonna bring different political beliefs.

Brad Means: What do you say to the Republicans, to the conservatives, and small town Georgia outside of metro Atlanta who say wait, please don’t say that, I want my voice to always be heard.

Dr. Craig Albert: Republicans are always gonna be at home in Georgia as well, but it’s gonna be a little bit more competitive, which for a two party system is perfect. You want both parties to have a good base in a state so that they can compete with one another and allow the marketplace of ideas to be vibrant. That’s perfect because the Republican message will get out better and so will the Democratic message get out better. You’ll have progressives. You’ll have some very conservative individuals competing in actual political battleground, and that’s great. That makes our voices as citizens even more powerful because the politicians will have to be held more accountable to earn our trust to get our vote.

Brad Means: Does it bring more peace among the parties when both sides sort of have to get along to get things done?

Dr. Craig Albert: I think the time of peace in American politics is over.

Brad Means: I think you’re right.

Dr. Craig Albert: And right now it seems that the left is moving much more toward far left progressive. The right is matching that, moving much more towards far right, very conservative. And the base are moving with them, and the base for both sides are growing. So we’re growing in our extreme views. I don’t mean extreme views harshly. I mean, it’s just extreme to the right or extreme to the left. We’re growing in our extreme views versus one another, and the party base of both sides that are extreme are growing. That means what used to be a 10, 15% population that was in the middle isn’t there anymore. It’s shrinking, and there’s almost no candidates that can represent those in the middle. Most of the individuals that Republicans had lost in the House of Representatives that helped the Democrats gain almost 30 seats were moderate Republicans and they got beat by Democrats. That moderate voice is gone.

Brad Means: One of the things we also saw, which was a shock to no one was the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. What do you think about him stepping down? It kinda took longer than I thought.

Dr. Craig Albert: I don’t think President Trump could have asked for his resignation, which is a nice way of saying he was fired. Before the midterms, I think it would be a chaotic, maybe even cause a Constitutional crisis. With this Mueller probe going on, it looks like something else is going on by Sessions stepping down. You didn’t wanna give the Democrats anymore power before the midterms to do that. Now they have the power to do anything. They’re gonna investigate this. Sessions is gone. We’re not sure who’s gonna be replacing him. We have Matthew Whitaker as the interim. But the Democrats are sure to do something about this once the next session starts.

Brad Means: What does that mean for President Trump? Does it just mean the rest of his first term is spent in a courtroom?

Dr. Craig Albert: Absolutely. Committee investigations in the House of Representatives. Maybe impeachment. I said this a few months ago with you that if they want, we could expect some type of impeachment proceedings. I think if Nancy Pelosi becomes Speaker of the House, which is all indications that she will, she will definitely make sure that there is some type of impeachment investigations. It might not go through a trial of impeachment in the House, but I’m sure she will investigate Trump and things that she believes or the left believes that he might be guilty of obstruction or something shady.

Brad Means: We talked about this briefly last time, but I just wanted to kind of give the viewers a feel for what Washington DC is gonna look like for the next two years with the Democrats running the House, Republicans running the Senate. Can we just expect nothing to get done from an agenda, from a policy standpoint?

Dr. Craig Albert: Absolutely, we can expect that nothing will get done from a policy standpoint. This is what we call divided government. It actually makes sense constitutionally, and the founding fathers would probably be happy that we have a divided government again. The houses are supposed to check one another. Regardless of what party is in both, they’re supposed to check one each other. The houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, are supposed, they’re built to check the President of the United States, regardless of the party. Party politics corrupts that process that the founding fathers created of checks and balances and separation of power. Thomas Jefferson said there should be a year wait in Congress before a bill is proposed, before you’re allowed to vote on it, to make sure there is gridlock and there is no passion of getting something done immediately just for the sake of it in the House. So this allows the founding fathers’ ideas of checks and balances, securing each other, ambition made to counteract ambition to happen. So nothing occurring might actually be what our Constitution was created to do, so I wouldn’t let everybody get all depressed that that’s gonna happen. What might be bad is if it’s all about let’s just hurt President Trump just to hurt President Trump. That is not what the founders would have envisioned.

Brad Means: Right, the converse of this argument is, will the Democrats then if they can’t agree on anything to accomplish, just try to undo all the president’s built in his first few years?

Dr. Craig Albert: They might try, but remember, the Republicans gained power in the Senate, and it takes both houses for anything to pass so I doubt that they’ll be able to undo anything significantly. They can try to obstruct his agenda going forward, but they were doing a good job at that, which is their job to obstruct the opposite party and the president’s agenda moving forward. So I don’t think we’ll see much change except a more combative and more investigations at the bequest of the members of Congress.

Brad Means: So do you see, and you already answered this because we agree that probably nothing will get done the next two years, but is there anything you can think of where Nancy Pelosi and President Trump would be side by side, holding their hands up in victory saying look what we passed, look what we did?

Dr. Craig Albert: I think they can do some infrastructure, they can both, the Democrats are big on spending for the infrastructure. President Trump promised on his campaign that he was gonna increase infrastructure spending, so rebuilding roads, rebuilding bridges, these types of things, so I think we might see a giant infrastructure build, which would be great for America, great for the economy, great for the stock market, great for individuals to just increase our wallet size. That’s about all I see them, is something happens. Foreign policy, North Korea, maybe we can see both teams coming together in a collective, unifying voice. But I don’t see room for anything else that calls for compromise and negotiation.

Brad Means: So where do we go from here? A lot of tension, lot of controversy in this country right now, that’s where our conversation will head with Dr. Craig Albert in just a moment. Can he offer any hope for us to get along in the coming months and years on the Means Report.

Part 2

Brad Means: Welcome back to the Means Report. Talking to Dr. Craig Albert, getting all sorts of political insight into what just happened in the midterm elections and what happens going forward, and Dr. Albert, the beginning of the news cast, the broadcast, was spent talking about Georgia’s governors race because it’s still locked up. But there were other governors races that the nation was watching that comes to Trump indicators. Will he or will he not get a second term? We saw some Republican governors go down.

Dr. Craig Albert: That’s right, we did, in the Midwest and the rust belt where the Democrats overlooked in 2016 that allowed Trump, in my opinion, those were the states that allowed Trump to win the presidency. These very same, Michigan, Wisconsin, these are the, Pennsylvania, these are the states that went Democrat this time. Now what that means for re-election for Donald Trump in 2020, he’s not gonna have the party apparatus controlling the states during the re-election campaign anymore. He’s not gonna have the good vast ground campaign in place run by the states’ governors office during this re-election campaign. That changes everything. We can expect the Dems to have a very good ground campaign to start now that they’re gonna be controlling the governorships in these major rust belt states.

Brad Means: So it’s okay as a voter to say, let me see what party that state’s governor is and that’ll pretty much help me figure whether Trump can win it or not?

Dr. Craig Albert: I think that’s a good indicator, absolutely.

Brad Means: So Florida, to use the President’s language, is huge then because the Republican won, right?

Dr. Craig Albert: Absolutely. Florida is in one of those contitious contests that Georgia’s in. It always has been purple. It’s been turning red recently, but it’s going more blue right now. That’s probably the most significant victory for the Republicans is maintaining the governorship of the state of Florida.

Brad Means: So if he gets a second term, his path is gonna be different this time around?

Dr. Craig Albert: Oh absolutely, he’s gonna have to focus on the deep south, he’s gonna have to focus on Florida. He’s gonna have to focus on Texas as well. Not just to win the presidency, but to make sure that Texas stays Republican because it, believe it or not, nobody would ever thought it would happen, is purpling as well. And it could be in contest for 2020, but especially 2024.

Brad Means: You pointed out something to me earlier, the fact that the Democrats gained control of the House is not a complete defeat for President Trump and his future, right?

Dr. Craig Albert: This is what Trump lives for. He has a political enemy in Congress now that he can fight against, that he can wage political combat with in the Democrats controlling the House of Representatives. Now Trump can be Trump, and people like, Republicans like when Trump is Trump. He can be combative, he has somebody to blame now. He said this on Wednesday during his press conference. I love the fact that the Dems control the House because now I can blame them for everything. That’s what he’s good at. Why he wanted Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House which he also said on Wednesday was because she’s combative as well. She’s a great negotiator. That is gonna pit her against Trump. She’s gonna try to out-Trump Trump. But you can’t out-Trump Trump. You need a different strategy because he’s remarkable at being himself.

Brad Means: I thought it was interesting on Wednesday when he said Nancy Pelosi deserves to be the Speaker of the House. I hope she gets it. And she came back and said, you don’t deserve anything. Here’s how you get to be successful in life. It’s not because you deserve it. Do we have to pick apart everything somebody else says these days? Every word?

Dr. Craig Albert: I think we’re getting to that, but, I think that’s unfortunate. I think our intent needs to be taken more seriously than what we actually say and what do we mean and let’s start talking about the larger issues rather than the little mistakes we might say.

Brad Means: What about the relationship between President Trump and the media? We saw that come to a head again this past week when he yanked the press credentials for the White House of a CNN reporter because of the way the reporter behaved during a news conference. Your thoughts on his relationship with the media going forward?

Dr. Craig Albert: I think I’ll probably be the only political scientist to say this, but it takes two to tango. Trump is of course obstructing the media’s capability for them to cover him the way they want to cover him. At the same time, the mainstream media, the national media is being much more combative, much more, not just trying to hold the president to account which is kind of like their unofficial constitutional duty. They don’t have one in the Constitution, but this is kind of their responsibility is to hold the government to account. But they do seem to be taking President Trump’s presidency much more personally and much more negative and therefore a lot of the mainstream media, national media are fighting out against him. That’s of course gonna make him even more combative against the media. The media’s supposed to check the president, and the president has every right to check the media as well. They’re supposed to, again, it’s a beautiful marketplace of ideas, checks and balances that the founders had envisioned. Alexis DeToutville says, one of the great fosters says, this is what makes America perfect, is the fight between media and government. The good natured battle that they’re supposed to keep each other in account. So they have a part to play in this as well. I don’t think it’s proper for the media to really be that combative toward President Trump, to fact-check him. It seems out of decorum. At the same time, President Trump is definitely out of decorum as well, the way he engages in conflict and the way he personally attacks and offends the media. So both, I think both parts are to blame in this.

Brad Means: Yeah, but are we wrong to expect that decorum in a setting, especially the White House where this latest news conference took place? Isn’t it just good behavior when you’re in the presence of a president of the United States to check yourself, and to be respectful? I don’t care who holds that office. To argue with that man or woman, isn’t that just as it’s very core improper?

Dr. Craig Albert: It’s definitely not in decorum. It’s unprofessional, I think. But to give credit to the mainstream media, they say because Trump is so out of the ordinary for a president that he’s not in the establishment. He does not fit any of the rules or models that the presidency often fits. Now to his credit, he said that’s exactly the way he was going to be, and that’s what I think got him into the White House. Because he didn’t care about all this PC culture. So the media says we have to fight this because you’re going against what the establishment is and we’re part of the establishment, so we’re gonna wage combat with you. And in so doing, I think they’ve allowed themselves to be much more combative, and they kinda played Trump at Trump’s game, which brings down both side’s leveled etiquette and professionalism. They’re accusing Trump of the same behavior that they are in fact engaging in.

Brad Means: Well if you turn on the computer and read any internet article, not any, but a lot of them, or if you listen to network news, you might think that nobody likes our president. But then you look at his approval rating and it keeps climbing. What is the deal here? And it goes back to a question I’ve asked you a million times. Do Republicans just not answer pollsters honestly? Do they not give their opinion so that when you do see those national opinion polls and surveys, they’re skewed?

Dr. Craig Albert: There are a lot of people that don’t answer honestly. That has to fall within the margin of error. There’s sampling bias, there’s all times of fancy political science terms that go into this. And this is why the 2016 election just didn’t turn out right for pollsters is because lots of Trump supporters were afraid of being publicized as a Trump supporter and what would happen to them. Shame, and this type of thing because they were voting for somebody who doesn’t fit the stereotypical model of a president, so they lie about it. We see this all the time. Almost every American lies about, I don’t wanna say that. A lot of Americans lie about their income level.

Brad Means: Sure.

Dr. Craig Albert: When somebody calls and samples them. I would never tell them that I make like 10 grand a year or something like that.

Brad Means: Right, no no.

Dr. Craig Albert: I try to increase it, that’s natural to human nature.

Brad Means: You have to increase it.

Dr. Craig Albert: So there’s ways. There’s sampling statistics and methodologies that counter that, but you just can’t, you have to be cautious in this era about Trump what type of information we get from our polls.

Brad Means: We asked you this in the town hall meeting we had a few weeks ago on the Means Report. Dr. Albert was kind enough to bring some of his students into our studio, we had a great Means Report that day. It was one of my favorites. But I wanna ask you again in front of this audience, this week, who influences our young voters? And we talked about the Democrats moving to the big cities in America and changing states from blue to red, from red to blue. Who influences the way our young people turn out, what party they’re gonna be tied to later?

Dr. Craig Albert: Everybody does.

Brad Means: Everybody does, so the parents can’t control it?

Dr. Craig Albert: No, not anymore. Unless you censor your household and don’t allow any electronic devices or i-Devices. Now we’re entering the i-Generation, Generation Z which is the first generation completely to grow up with iPhone capability or with internet capability just everywhere. That level of access to knowledge is profound. No other generation in the history of humankind has had that type of access to information. With that comes all types of proper information, facts, analysis that you can get. But what also comes, social media influence. What does Hollywood say about politics? What does each bigshot in each of the parties say about politics? You have a lot of things that you have to evaluate and analyze and a lot of young people aren’t quite equipped yet, a lot of people, even political scientists aren’t quite equipped yet to deal or analyze all this information. Nevermind fake news that you have which is a really serious information warfare campaign that exists on the internet waged by a botnet, by Russia, by North Korea, by all these different companies that create fake personalities to spread fake news purposefully to influence how people in the United States and throughout the western world vote and think about different things. They push out false news. Political scientists aren’t quite able to handle that type of information warfare, nevermind our students yet or our young people who are still in middle school or high school or just entering college. So I think it becomes even more important as parents, as media personalities, as professors, this is my most serious job right now. It’s not research or service or the news, it’s making sure students know how to comb through that news and decide for themselves what’s good, reliable, and verifiable information that they can make an opinion about themselves without any impact from Hollywood, President Trump, and especially no impact from me. I don’t wanna bias my students. I want them to know how to sift through the information, see what’s good information, what’s bad information, and be able to stand their ground when they make an argument.

Brad Means: Can you answer this question? It might be unanswerable. So let’s say they sifted and let’s say they filtered and let’s say they’re well informed, more Democrats or Republicans coming out of colleges these days?

Dr. Craig Albert: You know, we see a different type of conservative coming out of college than we did, let’s say, when I graduated, oh five years ago, let’s say, on TV.

Brad Means: Yeah.

Dr. Craig Albert: And then, we see a different type of Democrat. I would say it’s probably 55, 45 Democrat, just. I never ask my students that, but just sampling. But it appears that it’s in that nature that’s trending the way American politics is trending right now, and I think that’s the influence of our culture.

Brad Means: Dr. Craig Albert, a busy half hour for sure. Thank for you for all you continue to contribute to us.