Watergate scandal

Similar to that election when the Democrats won both houses of Congress in a big wave.

But really based on the numbers, you have to go back as far as the post-Watergate election, the midterm of 1974, when a whole generation of Democrats were elected across the map in a repudiation of Richard Nixon's corruption.

And remember, what happened in 1976, Jimmy Carter won, but then he sort of limped through his presidency and then we got the Reagan era.

So things change fast in American politics.

And then what, like eight years later, Reagan was in office, something like that.

No, people are comparing this election to the post-Watergate election.

And it's actually a pretty good, like, it's both because of the scale, but because what are, like, the two things? It's, like, high inflation and a deeply unpopular president.

Together.

So this is on a different level.

After that, I think you have to go to the post-Watergate election in 1974.

The Democrats won the House vote by 17 in that election.

But it's worth noting that that was also in an era when the South was solidly Democratic.

The bill is going to come due.

And it did come due for Trump and Republicans in what was the best race for Democrats since the midterm elections after Watergate.

Just a staggering rebuke.

of Republicans, an annihilation of Republicans, like all across the map, including ones that none of us thought were in danger, like Darlene Graham, the Republican Senate candidate in South Carolina.

I mean, it's just an, any one, it's not an exaggeration.

Like any one of these things that you could rattle off for eight hours of podcasting would have been worse than Watergate.

Yeah.

Undeniably.

You know, the magnitude of this midterm election was staggering.

Probably the only thing comparable in modern times is 1974, the post-Watergate election, where Republicans were wiped out.

Interestingly, six years later, they won the presidency and became the dominant party in America.

These things are not permanent by any means, but what MAGA represented was on the ballot.

It was an ass kicking.

It was a Watergate level repudiation.

Nowhere are the consequences of this election greater than Texas.

In the Lone Star State, we lost every single statewide election.

I was four years old.

But I watched what happened and became politically aware during that time.

My father taught me how to read by reading newspapers in which I was still reading about Watergate and Gerald Ford coming into office and all that shit.

And then I read about the really important selection of 1976 during our bicentennial where they were going to bring in cars.

I'm talking about a choice of focus.

After Watergate, I believe, Richard, that Gerald Ford closed the book on one man.

And it cost him in his reelection, which he did not win, to Carter in 76.

But in fact, his approval fell from, I think, 71 to about 50.

To me, that is more repudiation than rebuke.

That came right after Watergate race war.

As of all the elections you've been watching, what do you make of what just happened?

I think any one of those issues on their own might have been survivable and explainable by skilled politicians.