Can Republicans Energize Their Voters?

0:01Everyone wants healthcare to be simpler and easier. That's why UnitedHealth Group is fast-tracking more than 60 % of children's procedures that used to need pre-approval. So more kids get the care they need when they need it. And speeding up procedure approvals and payments for more than 1 ,500 rural hospitals. So they can focus on caring for their communities. And that's just the start. Learn more at uhg.com slash access. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel. We are now fewer than 30 days away from the 2026 midterm. Just how bad is the picture for Republicans?

0:43How much should we look to and trust the polls? How much will the money game matter? And what might Republicans and the president be trying to do if they want to keep control of Congress? Welcome to All Things with Kim Strassel. And joining me this week to analyze the state of the race is one of my favorite radio show hosts in the country, a man who is known for digging into the facts, the well-known nationally syndicated talk radio host Lars Larson, namesake of the wonderful daily Lars Larson Show. Lars, how are you? I'm doing great, and thank you for asking, Kim. And it's a pleasure to be with you because this is an important one.

1:18I mean, I know everybody says every election cycle, this is the most important election of America's entire history. But I really think it is because we can go one of two ways. And if we go the wrong direction, all we're going to do is watch the Democrats try to impeach President Trump for the next two years. So I want to hear more about that. But I also just want to start. I want to give listeners a little context here about what a special moment this is for me. So I grew up in Oregon. It's officially my home state. In fact, I'm visiting Oregon right now. And when I was just starting out in my journalism career, this man named Lars Larson burst onto the Oregon conservative talk radio scene.

1:58And every time I would come back home, my family was just obsessed with Lars Larson. Never missed a show. I have all these really fond memories of my dad, rest in peace, saying all the time, well, you know, Lars said the other day. So you went, you now do two shows, one in the Northwest daily and then a national show, the start of the national one more than 20 years ago. And I have been fortunate to be on your show a few times and had a connection with you over the years. And so it's a real privilege for me to have you now on my podcast. We love having you on the program and I love the insights that you bring to things.

2:34And yeah, I've been doing radio a long time, so I did reasonably well. This is what year 51 for me in radio. So next year will be 52. It's been a long time. You can give me some podcast tips along the way here. Just go back and elucidate on that a little bit. Why is this election so important in your mind? Well, I mean, number one, you're going to get if the Democrats get a majority in the House only and not in the Senate. The first thing they're going to do, and it sounds like you can predict it just as well as you could predict Donald Trump's first term in office. They will say we need to impeach him.

3:09And I say, to accomplish what? Because, number one, you may impeach him in the House. If you have even a one vote majority, they'll probably bring about an impeachment. What does that actually accomplish? It makes number three for Trump. I guess it puts him in the record books for that. But they're not going to convict him in the Senate, nor are they going to remove him. So they think that somehow they're just going to shame him into not doing the things they don't like. Well, the thing is, the majority of Americans, and I got called out on this the other day, Kim, because technically Trump didn't achieve a majority in 24.

3:40He had 49.8 percent. So technically it was just a large plurality. But he beat the daylights out of the one and a half billion dollar effort by Kamala Harris to be, you know, the Democrats president. And God help us if she'd been elected, because things would be you think they're bad. You think you're unhappy with seven dollar diesel and all that. So am I. But they would be 10 times worse with Kamala Harris, because remember, and I guess it gets into the question you're going to ask or have been asking. And that is where the midterm is going to go. Are Americans really going to say we want to go back to the days of Joe Biden?

4:16We want to go to the policies of the Democrats, which is not drop taxes because we got the 2017 tax cuts in the one big, beautiful bill got extended. Instead, they would be wiped out and the Democrats would decide that our path to prosperity is going to be to simply tax everybody in America more as though that accomplishes anything. I think all of that is bad. And why would Americans vote for that? And by the way, impeaching Donald Trump will just be one piece of this. I keep reminding folks, I mean, the list of other cabinet officials that are lined up to be impeached to other just players in the Trump administration and the oversight investigations.

4:53It will be all drama all the time. What you just said, I think, is really interesting and important. I don't get the view. And I've been out talking with a lot of people out on the road, all the people I live and work with. I don't get the impression that what you suddenly have in this country is this wake up and all of these Americans decide, oh, yeah, actually what we really wanted was Kamala Harris style governance. We're all about democratic socialism now. What I'm seeing when I look at the polls, when I talk to people, is that the biggest problem the GOP has at the moment is that a whole lot of people that were enthused and excited about Donald Trump in 2024 that came out to vote just aren't really excited to go vote again this year.

5:38You know, they're a little frustrated, unhappy about, like you said,$7 gas and diesel prices. But there seems to be a turnout issue going on. What are you seeing? Why do you think the polls look the way they do? I think there's some truth to that, that there's the lack of excitement idea. But I don't understand why, because if you saw the reason to vote for Trump in 24, saying we don't appreciate the policies of Joe Biden and we anticipate that the policies of a Kamala Harris administration would be worse and they would have been, that you say, so I'm going to vote for Trump. But then in four years, if certain things haven't gone my direction, even though most of what Trump promised has gone exactly where he promised it would go.

6:18Number one, secure the southern border. It's better secure than it's ever been in all of American history by the numbers. Bring inflation down. Well, I know you'd like to have erased the 40 percent or 30 or 40 percent inflation that occurred during Biden. Trump didn't promise that, but he did bring inflation back down to where we're debating is 3.4 percent good enough. I don't think even Trump thinks it's good enough because two or a little over two is the target. But it's certainly better than an average of 10 percent a year for four years in a row. And then just ask yourself, do you want to go back to that?

6:52And can you get excited about saying, I need to make sure we keep on this path and that we don't go back to the other path because it's demonstrably worse? We're going to take a quick break when we come back more with nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host Lars Larson. everyone wants health care to be simpler and easier that's why united health group is fast tracking more than 60 percent of children's procedures that used to need pre-approval so more kids get the care they need when they need it and speeding up procedure approvals and payments for more than 1500 rural hospitals so they can focus on caring for their communities and that's just the start learn more at uhg.com access

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8:26Welcome back to All Things with Kim Strassel. I am here this week with Lars Larson talking about the midterms. One of the things that I really like about your show, and people should know this, prior to you becoming a conservative talk radio host, you were an investigative journalist on radio. You won a lot of awards, in fact. And that's the background I come from, too. I was on the news side of the Wall Street Journal before I moved over to the Edge House. So you dig into numbers, and this is why your show is still good. You still look at the facts. You still dig into the numbers. How much do you trust the polls?

8:58You've been doing this a long time. I actually read an interesting article. Bear with me in Slate, which is a left leaning outlet. But they put out this weekly newsletter, which is kind of informative, also kind of funny, which is rare for any outlet on the left. But they did this piece that I read this morning and they talked to a Democratic pollster who pointed to two red flags. One was she was worried that a lot of polls seem to be building in record high turnout by younger voters for Democrats. Now, I can see a lot of younger voters flipping their vote this cycle because, A, they're fickle, and B, as Slade pointed out, cost of living is a huge issue.

9:37And younger people notoriously don't have a lot of money. So they're probably very unhappy about that at the moment. But also, you know, this depressed GOP turnout, they seem to be factoring in like really, really low GOP turnout. And she had some real concerns about models doing both of those things. Like, as she said, you know, whenever you are basing your polls on the notion of record high or record low anything, you're probably, you know, you're walking out on the edge of a branch there. How much do you trust the polls? What do you see in there that's concerning? Where do you think they're getting things right?

10:12Hey, the polls said that Hillary Clinton was going to be president, too. And they turned out to be wrong. And then all the pollsters said, oh, we're ashamed of what we've done. We'll go back. And I don't think they changed much at all. Let me tell you something, though, about that poll. One of the numbers I've always put to people, and that is the average turnout average for 18 to 35 year olds is about 15 percent, which is pathetic. So this morning, I saw a poll, brand new poll, and it says they're going to have dramatically increased young person turnout. And you know what they call it? They say 34 percent of 18 to 30 year olds say they plan to vote.

10:46Now, we all know about the plans of millennials and younger people. So if you're saying it's dramatically bigger, they'd be right. If they pulled 34, that's almost double what they usually do. But it also means two thirds of that age group is not going to bother. They're not even planning to vote. And it also depends on whether or not when somebody says, I plan to vote, are they actually going to do it? I will tell you this, people my age and their mid to upper 60s, Our turnout is about 78 percent. We have a dramatically high turnout compared to younger people. Now, the younger people could choose to go vote.

11:19And I don't know why they're lazy about it, because that's really what it comes down to is laziness saying, yeah, I know there's an election. I know I could vote by mail. I could absentee vote. I could early vote. I'm just not going to even bother. Well, if they're telling you they care that little about it, then better they don't take part. Yeah. I mean, this might be a polling question, too. One thing on that is I'm also curious as to whether or not some of these polls are once again missing working class voters, in particular, white working class voters. This has been a perennial problem, as you know, in polls in the past.

11:53But here's the thing that keeps jumping out at me. I find it really interesting that all these polls show Republicans just completely fizzling, having all this trouble in supposedly solidly red states, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Florida, Texas. But candidates seem to be doing pretty well in some traditional blue states, like Susan Collins is keeping things even in Maine, and John Smyrna looks to be staging a real race in New Hampshire, and Michelle Tafoya in blue Minnesota is running neck and neck with Peggy Flanagan. And by the way, I want to be clear, I think that Republicans are down in the polls, right?

12:28I do not think they're winning this race. The question is by how much? And I wonder if those red state polling contests are maybe missing some of the voters that pollsters. I don't know your thoughts on that. I think you're absolutely right. And I think that's why it's going to be deceptive to look at the polls and then say that's going to predict what happens on November 3. I don't think it's going to go that way. And I've seen the other numbers that jumped out at me were Latino numbers where they say Latino numbers are down. Here's the thing. I understand there's a perception, I think mostly by white people, that they say, well, we can't go after illegal aliens because Latinos won't like it.

13:05Actually, I've been invigorated by the fact that an awful lot of Latinos say you should come here legally like I did, like my mom and dad did. And they don't have much respect. And if you say, don't you have respect for your fellow Latinos? You know what, Kim? I don't have respect for criminals who happen to have the same skin color or age as I do. I don't say, well, ordinarily I wouldn't like Ted Bundy, but, you know, he was a white guy and I'm a white guy. So so therefore I have to endorse the serial killer Ted Bundy. I realize that reference is dating me. But you really think that Latino voters are that simplistic that they say, well, if you're going to kick all the Latinos out.

13:41Oh, and then, by the way, that makes better job prospects and school prospects and housing prospects for my family and me. You really think that Latinos aren't going to respond to that? How do you see the money disadvantage or advantage playing out here? I mean, this is really. You mean after USAID was done away with and all the other scams the Democrat Party was using and they used to be flush with cash and now they're dead flat broke and the Republicans are flush with cash. But the Republicans, as far as near as I can tell, are not scamming it out of daycares at the Leering Center in Minnesota.

14:13Yeah, it's really remarkable that, too. And, you know, there's actually has been some reporting, I don't think nearly enough on this Democratic donor strike. I mean, the guys who write the big checks remain just completely sore over the whole Kamala Harris campaign and the disastrous kind of cosmic mismanagement of their money in that 2024 cycle. Money is a proxy for speech. It does matter in elections, but it isn't everything. How important do you think this last 30 days, this sort of massive money advantage Republicans have, is really going to matter on the ground? I think it's going to be sizable.

14:49I think you should factor something else in as well, because the Democrat Party has made its rallying cry for the last at least decade or so. We're here to protect democracy. And then what do they do with democracy? I mean, if you want to go back all the way to 2020, they engineered the nomination of Joe Biden and knocked his opponents out. They had done somewhat the same thing to get Obama in and knocking his opponents out. And then when Kamala Harris comes along, they said, we don't even have to bother with the people or voters or anything like that. We're just going to choose as the party. This is your candidate.

15:21Well, when the Democrat Party, the defenders of democracy, even though technically we're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic. And that's an important distinction. But when the Democrat Party says we're going to protect democracy by cutting the voters all the way out of all the important decisions, who could respect that? Well, it seems to be really coming home to roost, too. I mean, some of these funding mismatches are stunning, really stunning. I mean, I think in Texas and Florida, I mean, these are multiples more that Republicans are spending. But the president now, President Trump, he's out on a 32-day cruise with campaign events almost every day to fire up Republicans.

15:59He has been choosing some odd places to go. He kicked off his cruise in Alabama and Oklahoma. Now, last I looked, the GOP's problems were not centered in Alabama. I guess the idea here is you bleed over to nearby states, you know, Alabama near the Florida panhandle. The other idea is that when Trump has these rallies, they're televised, the whole nation can see them, so you might as well do it in front of a happy audience. But is this the best use of his time? Not necessarily. And frankly, Kim, you just brought a sore point up for both my wife and for me. We've been complaining that here in the Pacific Northwest, I know they allegedly blew Oregon and Washington.

16:37I could argue against that all day long. Trump hasn't bothered to come out. And it does bother us because we say, hold on, he keeps showing up in all these tried and true places. How about coming to the real battleground, you know, Seattle to Portland? And I don't, for the life of me, understand why, you know, he doesn't pay much attention to those places. And I wish he would. And in fact, I was thinking early on, remember in the campaign where he showed up and it Was it the Bronx? Where he showed up in the Bronx? I was just going to say, also New Jersey. He went into the heart of darkness. Great.

17:07If he's going to go to the Bronx, he might actually come to Portland or Seattle. And then he didn't. And I don't understand why. Because can you imagine? You want to get big news coverage? Come to one of these liberal havens. I can't swing a dead cat without hitting a godless pagan liberal because they're all around me. Come out here, Mr. President. Give them the message. And yes, they'll all get mad and they'll break things and they'll set things on fire. And Americans will get a great picture of what America is going to look like if you let those knuckleheads take over. I agree with you. I don't understand why he's not trying to go.

17:40And especially because in a lot of these states, like, and I know I'm right here in Oregon right now, people are just demoralized. You know, I mean, they want to be reminded that they're actually like-minded folks, common sense, other voters. And that's what you end up seeing in these rallies. Do you know what I'd love to see him do? I'd love to see him come to Oregon and give the Republican candidate, who wasn't my first choice, but she's a decent Republican, Christine Drazen. Give her a push because this state, the state of Oregon, I vote in the state of Washington, but in the state of Oregon, they have come this close.

18:10Chris Dudley, when he ran, was missed by 22 ,000 votes at a 1.6 million votes cast. Trump could make the difference. or he could, you know, I mean, he'll make all the liberals mad anyway. But wouldn't it be great to have that kind of victory to say Donald Trump helped to get Christine Drazen across the finish line? Because all her opponent, the incumbent governor, has been saying is, I hate Trump. I hate Trump. I hate Trump. That's her entire campaign. Oh, and by the way, I'm going to raise your taxes and I hate Trump. Vote for me. And that's working. Well, half the people say they're going to vote for her.

18:42Well, that's what I want to talk to you about that. This whole Christine Drazen, I think she has a shot at winning. But I think that there's a theme going on in this election that's being a little bit overlooked by most people in the media. And it might also have something to do with those candidates I mentioned earlier that are the Republicans who are doing well in some of these blue states. We've been seeing this divide in the United States between red state and blue state governance models. And that has really grown exponentially, right? I mean, we've now got places like Florida and Texas just getting millions of new people coming because they want lower taxes, more freedom.

19:19You've got places like New York and California doubling down higher taxation, more energy mandates, all these things that are bad. My view is that one of the things you are happening, seeing happen in this race is that voters or blue states are beginning to get fed up. They're beginning to see the real consequences of this. And the only people, the only party to blame is the Democratic Party because they hold super majorities in all these states. So Oregon, correct me if I'm wrong, this spring, 83 percent of Oregon's voted down an initiative to raise fuel taxes, payroll taxes and vehicle fees.

19:55Am I right? No, you're right. No, but let me make it worse. So one year ago, the Democrat supermajorities in both the House and the Senate, and you have Democrat Governor Kotech, and you've got every statewide office is filled with a Democrat. And all the major cities and counties are staffed with Democrat elected officials. So the Democrats run the entire show. And what happened? Kotech goes to the legislature, says, give me 15 billion increase. Now, remember, this is a state of 4 million people. That's a lot of money in a state like that. So even the Democrat legislator said, no way. So she cut it in half, said, I'll take eight billion.

20:31They said, no way. Now, these are Democrats saying no to a Democrat governor. So they dropped it down to four, and they finally passed in a special session. And the voters immediately went out and gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures, put it on the ballot. And when it got voted on, even though the governor tried to sabotage that vote, it was supposed to happen in November. She moved it back to May, I think much to her chagrin, because the voters came out 83 % statewide to 17 % yes. But in the Democrat stronghold of Multnomah County, 70 % no. So in other words, in a place that is 86 % Democrat registration, they said no by 70-30.

21:11And do you know what the response of Democrats and the governor was? Oh, you said no to$4 billion in taxes? Well, we could tax some other things instead. And they're not getting the clue. They have no connection to the voters. It's like mom and dad tell the kid, no, don't do that. And the kid immediately goes in and does it again. The Democrats are behaving like children. They're saying, if you don't like that$4 billion in taxes, how would you like these billions of taxes? They're crazy. And the voters are finally getting it, that being in a single party rule state where Democrats call all the shots, declining economy, big companies moving out, fleeing from the place.

21:50And their answer is, let's tax them some more, because both Washington and Oregon have that problem. They are taxing the daylights out of companies and companies like Starbucks and others are simply abandoning ship and going away. We're going to take one more break when we come back. Should Republicans be out there with a next two year agenda? Everyone wants health care to be simpler and easier. That's why UnitedHealth Group is fast-tracking more than 60 % of children's procedures that used to need pre-approval, so more kids get the care they need when they need it. And speeding up procedure approvals and payments for more than 1 ,500 rural hospitals, so they can focus on caring for their communities.

22:34And that's just the start. Learn more at uhg.com slash access.

22:42From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel. Welcome back to All Things. Kim Strassel here with Lars Larson. Talk to me about, you just mentioned Washington State too, since we're on a little Pacific Northwest rant here at the moment. You've also got potentially a blowback going on because you now vote, I'm assuming, you vote in Washington State. Yep, I do. Quick history here. About 100 years ago, Washington state passed an amendment to its constitution prohibiting graduated taxes. And the state's liberal political class has been looking for ways around that forever.

23:17Unfortunately, the state Supreme Court issued a horrible ruling a couple of years ago allowing for punitive new taxes. Democrats are now implementing this millionaire's tax, but it's on the ballot. Where do you see that going? First of all, don't call it a millionaire's tax. I've done that, too. It's not. It is an income tax. Income tax, yes. And 10 different times the voters of Washington State, even before I became a voter in Washington State, 10 different times they said no to an income tax. So the Democrat legislature, they did what they do so well. They lied. They came to the public, said, we're only going to tax millionaires.

23:53But we won't put that in writing in the bill. We want to be able to graduate it down and say, well, we're taxing millionaires. Now we're taxing half millionaires, quarter millionaires. We know that's where it's going to go. And, Kim, I'll remind you of something I know you know well. Just over 114 years ago, the United States government said, let's have an income tax, but it's only going to be on the super rich, we promise, and it's only going to be 1%, maybe going up to 7 % for the people like Andrew Carnegie and folks like that. And that lasted for seven years. And then they immediately said, let's tax everybody.

24:26And now we tax everybody. So that lie, that getting the camel's nose under the tent, that's what they're doing. They're saying, we're only going to tax the millionaires. You say, OK, then put it in writing. No, we don't put it in writing because I think people like Jamie Peterson, who is this crazy member of the Senate, state Senate from Seattle. He's real plain about it. You know, he calls it. Do you know what a pie crust promise is? Oh, I have seen this. Yes. Mary Poppins. It's they're easily made and easily broken. That's how Jamie Democrat Jamie Peterson party of slavery since 1829. That's how they characterize it.

24:59It's a pie crust promise. Easily made and easily broken. Yeah, well, that is the huge camel nose, head, most of the body under the tent if they manage to get that income tax passed. But, you know, Washington state, they've rejected this many times before. I'm hopeful that they might do so again. The voters are going to reject it again. And then watch. The courts will try to reject the rejection by the voters. I kid you not. No, I know. They've done it before. Washington has become particularly bad about allowing direct democracy. It's absolutely appalling. Last question, just to finish this out.

25:30you were talking about things that kind of torqued you and your wife a little bit, Trump not come into the, you know, the blue strongholds to motivate. Here's my frustration. I just want to get your thoughts on this. Republicans are out there on the campaign trail. They're talking a lot about their past accomplishments. And those accomplishments are real. OK, all the provisions in the one big, beautiful bill. They stopped a monster tax hike, all the Trump reforms, deregulation, Supreme Court wins. OK, I think all that matters. But the reality is, is voter sentiment. They're not real happy about some of these temporary problems, cost living things.

26:02And voters also, as you know, their sort of attitude is, what are you doing for me next? And I kind of wonder why the GOP, why Trump is just not out there with an agenda for the final two years. What are your thoughts on that? And if they were to do it, what should they be talking about? Well, see, I think they should talk about affordability. You should take on your toughest critics and say, by the way, we saw a 40 % increase under Biden. We've brought that increase down as far as we can. And if we continue to make America prosperous and keep taxes and regulations low, we'll have more of that prosperity and we'll be able to deliver more.

26:38If, on the other hand, you go back the other direction, it'll be your choice. And lay the choice out that way. I think that President Trump, who's usually willing to communicate beyond everybody's expectation, Usually he'll over-explain, if nothing else. He's been under-explaining on this, on the war in Iran and everything else. The explanation I keep giving people is, look, you want to accept a nuclear-armed Iran, and since they've been threatening to kill America for 50 years, what do you think they'll do the minute they have nuclear weapons? Whereas Trump appears to have them on their lips.

27:10We're told that straight-over news now has almost 100 % of the oil flowing through it. And Iran, I guess, as of this week, doesn't have a single bit of oil in the pipeline. Their final deliveries to China are going to happen in the next week or so. And they are out of gas. There's a pun intended there, but they're out of money. They're going to be flat broke. Now, is that probably hurting the people in Iran, too? Yes. I don't think there's any way around that, any more than when you're at war. And we really are kind of in a different kind of war here. We're saying, give up your nuclear ambitions, Iran.

27:43and you can participate in the rest of the world community. They're not going to do it. So should Trump and the GOP be making a better case to say, look, things are much better than they were and make it clear how much better they are and the prospect is for them to get better. But if you decide to go a different direction on November 3rd, a lot of that is going to get erased by the other party. Lars Larson, the host of the nationally syndicated Lars Larson Show. Thank you so much for coming on the show this week. We also want to thank our listeners. If you enjoyed this podcast, we are here every week.

28:16Please do hit the subscribe button. And if you'd like to write to us, you can at atkim at wsj.com.

28:28Everyone wants health care to be simpler and easier. That's why UnitedHealth Group is fast tracking more than 60 % of children's procedures that used to need pre-approval. so more kids get the care they need when they need it. And speeding up procedure approvals and payments for more than 1 ,500 rural hospitals so they can focus on caring for their communities. And that's just the start. Learn more at uhg.com slash access.