Producers' Pick | Mark Penn dissects the democrats' midterm loss

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What did you think going in? I think if people are just tuning in, I'm sure you're not just tuning in, but just know this. We do not know how's the majority in the House. We do not know how's the majority in the Senate. And we're about to break down four key races that will decide that in the Senate.

And for the House, it seems to be trending Republican's way. First off, on first blush, when you got off the air last night, what was your biggest surprise? The biggest surprise really was the dimension of the win in Florida. Everybody thought Ron DeSantis would win. People thought, well, Rubio would be a lot weaker. But to really have a 20-point win, win Miami-Dade after DeSantis was only a single point, sweep the congressional races.

You know, I say it's the United States of Florida. They were their own country last night in terms of results because none of the other states really demonstrated that kind of change. Rubio, huge win, too, as well. And when you break it down, DeSantis won the Hispanic vote by 15, by 57 percent. He won the non-Cuban vote, I believe, by 5 percent. And he lost to Willer, I even forgot his name, the guy he lost to last time. Gilliam?

Gilliam, my bad. He lost to him by 10 points on the Hispanic vote. That's how much things have changed in four years. Here's how happy he was. You know, over these past four years, we've seen major challenges for the people of our state, for the citizens of the United States, and above all, for the cause of freedom.

We saw freedom in our very way of life in so many other jurisdictions in this country wither on the vine. Florida held the line. There was a really good speech as three little kids come out after his wife is so poised as a network anchor. He knew exactly what he was going to say. It was a raucous crowd.

And you looked at him as the ultimate winner last night. Oh, absolutely. I mean, because, look, he had not just words. Look, many, many politicians today and even senators, you know, they have some words.

They may or may not have had a bill or two. He had record performance through a pandemic, right? And a hurricane.

So those are the things that really pressure governors. And he came through that. And you see the complete breakdown of partisanship and break away from partisanship to reaffirm his leadership.

That really surprised me. That really said he's got to be waking up today and saying, hmm, this presidential run? I was thinking about it.

But now I've got to do it. Although there was a report in Axios last week that he wasn't going to do it. And Donald Trump came out yesterday and said there's a lot of things about Ron's background.

It wouldn't be good for him to come out and run for president. And here's what he said. The president said, the former president said last night, cut 28. The minute I made that endorsement, he got it. Then he ran and he wasn't supposed to be able to win. I did two rallies.

We had 52,000 people, each one. I thought that he could have been more gracious, but that's up to him. Talking about how when he wanted to go from congressman to get the nomination and then ultimately win, he won by one point, that he could have been more gracious. So there seems to be somewhat friction between the two. You've seen that before. How do you think this plays out?

Well, of course there's friction. They're rivals for the mantle of leadership. I think that last night the Republican Party didn't have national leadership. I think that in many of the races that turned out weaker than expected, Trump primary candidates came through. And while people will say Vance won or... J.D. Vance won and he was obviously a big pick for Trump. But that was an eight-point Trump state and Vance won by six and then Budd won.

Ted Budd, North Carolina. Right, and those were more Republican-leaning states. But in the 50-50 states, you know, having Walker and having Oz as the candidates, that pretty much jeopardized those two seats and, you know, Pennsylvania's a loss. And we'll see what happens with Georgia. Senator, it looks like Fetterman won that seat.

Yes, I mean, there's no question about that. And he did win this. Yeah, and so you look at that and you say, well, okay, McCormick probably would have been able to put up a better race. This was a good night for moderates. You know, moderate Democrats did well, the Spamburger race. Abigail Spamburger in Virginia.

Josh Gottheimer in New Jersey 5. Henry Cuellar in Texas. I mean, you know, really the electorate right now has to choose between a Republican party they don't like and a Democratic party they don't like. And so they're really looking for new leadership here. So Gottheimer is somebody that would break from the party once in a while.

Not enough. And Kenny Cuellar did when it comes to the border. I'm a big fan of his. And that to me is the old days where you used to go center left, center right, and then you debate out the issues. Now I feel as though your job is to leave the border wide open or build a wall and get control over it. I thought that was so obvious. When it comes to inflation, should we do everything we can to be energy independent? I thought that would be obvious from the 70s. I remember in eighth grade hearing about if America could be energy independent, we're finally away from OPEC in the Middle East. We did it and we gave it all back and then blamed them.

So some of these things are really mind boggling. But if you look at President Trump's pick of Mastriano, that might have been the most detrimental. Evidently, and you're the expert on this, you've got to get somebody to break away from their party to vote for you. So Kemp is going straight along party lines. People voted for Warnock, or not at all. Then you're asking people to break from Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor, and find odds on the ballot.

How hard is that? Exactly. And then Trump also raised a couple hundred million dollars that might otherwise have been raised for these candidacies and then didn't spend it. So look, I think that there's going to be a big clash here.

Maybe, you know, Tim Scott had a good night too. Mike Pompeo's certainly been looking at it. But I think there's going to be a Republican primary. There's not going to be just Donald Trump, you're the nominee.

And I think it's going to be a big fight. You know, I always say that right now we've been in a kind of what I call a Nixon-Carter-Reagan cycle, which is Nixon was unacceptable to the elites in the country and then was removed no matter how many votes he could get. Carter was the accidental president who was elected in response to Nixon, who otherwise wouldn't have been elected.

And then the question is, who is the Reagan? It doesn't have to be a Republican, but who is the person that is really going to lead the country and break the gridlock? OK, neither Trump nor Biden can do that.

The country knows that. Maybe DeSantis is probably a big pick. Maybe there's a Democrat that will emerge, you know, on the Democratic side. But today, Joe Biden is probably figuring, I'm going to be the Democratic nominee.

I'm going to run again. Let's assume for a second that people weren't all over our coverage last night and are just saying, what happened? So for the most part, the House is still up in the air. You've got 200 seats for Republicans, about 180 plus for Democrats. But why can't we give this to Republicans yet?

They've got to get to 218, correct? Well, you've got to count the votes. Look, experts who've poured through it think that the Republicans are somewhere between 220 and 225. So it's a thin majority for the Republicans. And New York could have delivered it, by the way. New York, five seats in Long Island and one in Hudson County.

Right. It's five seats with a very fractious kind of Republican caucus. So it'll be it'll be hard for for them to govern. And I think that the Biden administration will take away, well, you know, our message is not so bad. So I think everybody is going to dig in here for two years and look to the presidential rather than what happened after 94 when I worked with President Clinton, in which there was a kind of an era of reconciliation and progress. Because there was a big there was a decisive moment, a shellacking under Obama got 40 seats lost under Trump. And then Clinton lost big time when you were there in 94, right?

Yeah, he lost big time. He said, well, look, you know, I'm going to take a whole different direction with my administration. I'm now going to make compromises.

I'm going to do things the American people want to get done. And he worked with the Republican leadership. So so let's look at the four seats that are left. Laxalt's got about three point lead right now over the sitting senator in Nevada. If there's any indication there, is there a county out there that will change that race? I don't see it.

I think I think he that looks pretty good for him. I think that's likely to go out here out of nowhere. Senator Kelly, we thought this was a one or two point race, but has been up by about three or four on Masters. We also know that Carrie Lake is about a half a point back now in and in Arizona. So in that flip, that see flips, Republicans basically have to have the Senate, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. But we're still counting in Arizona. It's still a mess. Well, that's right.

But it looks like the governorship, if you assume that the remaining votes out there are more Republican as they seem to be, that that right now you'd say Lake has a has a reasonable chance, but that the Senate seat's going to go going to go Democratic. All right. So we go one on one. Now we're forty nine forty nine. Senator Ron Johnson, one point lead over Mandela Barnes. It's going up slightly as we went to bed.

You went to bed last night. So he says he expects to win, but he couldn't declare to win. You see anything out there that would stop Johnson from walking away, anything in Madison, a very liberal area. Again, they basically counted almost all the votes. So so I think Johnson's likely to hold on there.

So that would be that would be fifty forty nine. We'll wait to see what happens in Arizona and then we could end up fifty fifty. Then it comes down to Georgia. So what happens is Warnock has Alaska in there, too.

But there are two hours or two hours. Yeah. And it looks like McCaskill to lose. So but this is to more of a conservative candidate who Donald Trump won.

So if you're looking for who won it. So if you look at this race, I'm just going to tell you conventional wisdom. Then we'll get the Mark Penn wisdom. They say if you take the libertarian out, but it's one point two percent of the vote. And then if you look at the fact that Joe Biden becomes if it's the power in the Senate, Joe Biden becomes more of a factor in Georgia.

He's remarkably unpopular in Georgia. That helps Walker. Your thoughts? Well, again, this race is going to play itself out as the as really Warnock and Walker are surrogates for Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

And that was a race that was razor thin. Right. Ultimately. So so this is going to be I couldn't tell you who's going to win.

I think I think Herschel has maybe a scintilla of advantage. But boy, that was going to be a real race. They're going to they're going to have to go debate. They're going to go at each other. They're going to raise maybe one hundred, two hundred million dollars and they're going to go at it.

I have three and a half weeks to work this out. And I'll be Mark Penn for a second. I don't pull in President Trump because President Trump knows he went after to ask Perdue to run against Kemp and Kemp got crushed. Excuse me, Perdue got crushed. And then Kemp has a substantial victory outside DeSantis, the biggest winner. He goes back against Stacey Abrams. I don't care what you think of her.

She's extremely talented. And she has a lot of fame and he crushed her on my my view, pure performance of what he how he acted as governor over four years. So if Kemp comes forward to help Walker and DeSantis comes forward to help Walker and Trump steps back. That to me could give Walker more of a leg up your thought. Well, you're assuming you're assuming a rational Republican Party.

Right. And so Trump right now is going to be I can't be left out. I have to reestablish myself as the leader in the primary. So in theory, if what you're saying happened, that would obviously help Walker. You know, if he could get the why do you have governors you have you have a good plan, but can you get the people with the egos involved to execute that plan?

So far, that hasn't been the case. And Walker, you know, again, you look at this that I believe that the suburbs, you know, that Trump turned off the suburbs while while if you look at Youngkin in Virginia or DeSantis was able to win both the suburbs and kind of even the Latino vote. And so Walker has to make that kind of pivot, which he can't do with the baggage of Trump and maybe with his own baggage. But but, you know, it's going to be a close race.

It's it's a it's it's going to be all out. But it has not been decided. It genuinely you know, the candidates are going to have to on their own win or lose. Mark Penn's going to stick around for a few more minutes. Also, by the way, Walker, I think only had 8 percent of the black vote, which is amazing because he grew up in the black community, dirt poor, worked his way up. And I thought that would be somebody they could relate to the black community, but they just don't want currently any part of his candidacy.

But he'll be joining us at some point, maybe today or tomorrow. Hey, listen, the Brian Kilmeade show one day after Election Day. And no, we don't have the winners yet, but we'll continue to report as it all unfolds. Don't move from the Fox News podcast network. I'm Ben Domenech, Fox News contributor and editor of the transom dot com daily newsletter. And I'm inviting you to join a conversation every week. It's the Ben Domenech podcast.

Subscribe and listen now by going to Fox News podcast dot com. I can't tell you if the Republicans ultimately are going to win the Senate. They might. I can't tell you if they're likely to win the House.

It sure looks like they could. But what I can tell you is the biggest loser tonight is Donald Trump. His candidates, his handpicked candidates lost in states Republicans thought they could win in New Hampshire, with Baldick, in Pennsylvania, with Mastriano. The fact that you have his handpicked candidates for Senate in Pennsylvania, Oz, in Georgia, Herschel Walker, you know, both, you know, struggling.

You know, again, we don't know what the results are there, but these were states Republicans thought they were going to be able to flip. And that was Jonathan Karl, who wrote a hit book, not a hit book, but a negative book on Trump. That's how he saw it. Trump still talks to him all the time.

I'm really confused on why, to be honest. But he goes and says Trump is the big loser. Mark Penn, our guest here, who's all over the coverage for Fox, chairman of the Harris Poll, chief executive of Stagwell, Inc., for a longtime pollster for the Clintons. Mark, is he right, Jonathan Karl? Well, you know, I've always been fair to Trump. When he's right, I call it right. When he's wrong, I call him wrong.

In this case, I do think Karl is right. I do think this was a disastrous night for Trump. I think that he pushed a number of more extreme unpopular candidates through the Republican primaries that would be his people. And that's primarily in those states where you needed candidates with an edge, right, because they were really super close states.

Like, it didn't matter so much in, you know, it didn't so matter so much in Ohio or North Carolina. But where it mattered here, it really hurt the Republican Party. And so you look at this and you say, well, there was a loser in the Republican Party, Donald Trump, and what he did in the primaries.

And he also collected a couple hundred million dollars that he didn't give out in the in the primaries to support his candidates. And there was a winner, Ron DeSantis, who, you know, who took Florida with him and is the big exception to the to the trends that you see out there. And so, look, from having been through so many presidential primaries on the Democratic side, I'm just going to sit back here, you know, and get the popcorn because there is going to be, you know, a big fight here. And those fights often, you know, are good for parties.

I mean, Ford, Reagan. Yeah, I mean, look, they're good for parties because the winner, you know, oftentimes then solidifies support, gets ready for the general election and energizes the voters. Of course, you know, Trump will always want to take his marbles and go home if he loses. And I but I do think if somebody slays Trump in the primary, they are going to be in a really incredibly strong position in the general. The one thing I do know is that this public does not want a repeat of Donald Trump against Joe.

Nobody does. Only 30 percent of the people in exit poll Democrats want Joe Biden to run again. Donald Trump put this out on Truth Social.

One hundred seventy four wins, nine losses. A great evening in the fake news media together with their partner in crime. The Democrats are doing everything possible to play it down. Amazing job by some really fantastic candidates. Well, you know, interesting spin. You don't see it that way. A lot of them were just uncontested seats.

But the Dr. Oz thing is to me, that's the biggest stunner. The bulldog wasn't close. The master seems to be struggling. That does not look good for the president. No. And to go back to if it's Trump against Biden, 60 percent say they want an independent centrist.

That's the true mood of this country. Mark Penn, thanks so much.