Shields and Brooks on changes if the GOP takes the Senate

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• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Meanwhile, a record amount of money has already been spent in this midterm election, some $4 billion.

  Today, in a rare message on its Web site, the Federal Election Commission acknowledged being overwhelmed by the unusually large amount of paperwork coming in from campaigns.

  It's all part of the race to the finish of this election.

  And here analyze it all, Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks, who is New Orleans tonight.

  So, gentlemen, it is the most expensive campaign ever in this country, and it is coming right down to the wire.

  But, David, what we're hearing more and more about is Ebola. We're hearing a number of Republican candidates use this, blame the Democrats, blame the president. Is this helping Republicans?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Well, it feeds into the mood. This is sort of a mood election more than an issue election.

  I guess Barack Obama is on the ballot. Obviously, opposition to Obama is strong in all of these red states. But, mostly, it's a mood. It's a mood of anxiety. It's a mood of fear. It's a mood of suspicion of elites. It's a mood of a suspicion of the ruling establishment, the expert class.

  And so Ebola plays into all of that. I'm not sure it's really a major voting issue, but it plays into all of that. There are a lot of people who are really disenfranchised from the establishment and they don't really trust a lot of what the experts are telling them. There are a lot of people who are a little suspicious of globalization.

  And here comes a disease that comes from a mysterious, faraway place and seems to insidiously insert itself into our lives. And so there's just a feeling of sourness and a feeling that the country is being mismanaged. I guess it underlines the mood. I'm not sure Ebola itself is the issue, but the mood is strong and I think that's more or less driving this election.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  You see that as what's going on?

• MARK SHIELDS:

  Yes, I do. I think David makes a very good point, Judy.

  But, as I listen to this and hear charges that, for example, from Republicans, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, about a cartel of Mexican drug lords and terrorists combining and somehow bringing Ebola into the country that way, I'm just reminded of the words of a great senator, Ed Muskie, whose centennial we observed this year, of Maine, who said, in the final analysis, there's only two kinds of politics.

  It's not radical/reactionary. It's conservative/liberal. It's not Democrat/Republican. It's the politics of fear and the politics of trust. And this is very much the politics of fear. And David makes a good point. It contributes to the sense of anxiety, that events are in the saddle, and I think that does hurt the party in power.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Below the belt, David, then, is that what it amounts to?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Well, some of the charges are below the belt, the idea of the drug cartel, some of — there have been some below-the-belt charges. Some, I just disagree with.

  I think it's a respectable position to say we should not allow flights from West Africa. I don't think it's probably very effective, because don't just fly here from direct to Africa. They fly around the world and then come here. So, I just don't think it's effective, but it's a respectable position.

  But I don't think it's below the belt to have a feeling that the establishment or the ruling class in this country is not particularly competent. And you wouldn't look at the way Ebola has been handled, at least so far, and say it's been a testimony to the competence of the establishment.

  And there are a lot of people who are just — we have a great social segmentation going on. And so there are a lot of people just with no contact with the people like us they see on TV giving them expert opinion about Ebola or anything else, and they just want to wave it away and they just want to pull in and trust the people they trust and that's local.

  And when the national borders seem porous and uncontrolled, they are going to react. And I think that's a completely legitimate reaction.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Is there a legitimate strain here, then?

• MARK SHIELDS:

  There's a — Ebola is a continental tragedy for Africa. It is not an imminent epidemic in this country.

  Susan Page, our good friend at USA Today, made, I thought, a telling point. She said the Washington Redskins professional football team has used more quarterbacks this year, three, than have cases developed in the continental United States, the two nurses, who have not traveled from West Africa.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Now the man…

• MARK SHIELDS:

  And now the — and Nina Pham, who is at — Texas Christian University ought to be very proud and the nursing profession should be and her family — is, thank goodness, apparently free of the virus.

  So, is there concern? Absolutely. And is there a sense that things aren't going well, that it isn't in control? Yes, that's very much a part of the context and the Zeitgeist of this campaign.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Well, let's talk about what everybody's watching. Of course, we're watching everything.

  But, David, the big story of course is the Senate, whether it's going from Democrat to Republican control. It looks like both parties have headaches here at the end, though, that, for Democrats, Colorado and New Hampshire, supposed to be states that — blue states they thought they were going to be comfortable in. What about those states and what about other states you're looking at where Democrats have a worry?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Yes, I think there's not a tsunami in favor of the Republicans, but a bit of a tide, a small tide in favor of the Republicans.

  I think if you looked at the last few weeks, in most of the pollings — there are exceptions like Georgia and some other places, but most of the polling shows a bit of shift toward the Republicans, mostly because people are upset with President Obama, they are upset with the shape of the economy, they are upset with the shape of the country.

  And so you are beginning to see, I think, late swingers going a bit toward the Republicans more or less unhappily. And so where I am right now, in Louisiana, Mary Landrieu has run a pretty good campaign, but it's a state where Obama is not popular. And it's just harder and harder for Democrats to win in red states these days.

  And so I think a lot of Democrats are facing an uphill tide. The second thing I also noticed just in this general election campaign, unlike two years ago, the Republican brand has improved. The candidates are much better. There are no nut jobs running around so far. And so, they have got a — they have reestablished themselves as sort of the business management party.

  And in an economy that's stagnant, they have got a little more credibility than they did two years ago.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  What does the landscape look like?

• MARK SHIELDS:

  Well, for one thing, the great advantage, the gender advantage that Democrats have with women voters seems to be not as pronounced and not as dependable for Democrats this time, especially in Colorado, where the last poll showed Cory Gardner, the Republican, having an edge among women.

  And it struck me, Judy. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader and several others, sent the results of a Gallup poll which asked the concerns of women in the country. And you go through their concerns, and they're pay equality, they're discrimination in the workplace, child care, and so forth. At 2 percent is abortion rights and contraception.

  And I don't know if there's not the concern that there was in the past about Roe v. Wade being repealed or whatever, but it doesn't have the same resonance that it did have, even though the women's advantage still is sustaining two Democrats who are in tough races. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire has a double-digit lead among women. And so does Kay Hagan in North Carolina, an embattled red state.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  So, is part of this, David, the Democrats are stressing the wrong issues?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  I sort of think so.

  The Republicans, it's not exactly Plato's Symposium over there. But they are hitting the core issue, which is President Obama. But the Democrats have had a bizarre selection of issues, it seems to me, through the last six months. Remember, for a couple of months, they were talking about the Koch brothers over and over again. The Koch brothers are going do this. The Koch brothers are going do that.

  And maybe that was to gin up their donor base. But, as an issue, the Koch brothers are not an issue. Most people don't know who the Koch brothers are. And then I think with the war on women rhetoric, I think they have just gone to the well too many times with that. And it was an effective issue in elections past.

  But, as Mark said, in a lot of places, it's just not effective anymore. And I think people — either it's not germane, it's not salient to people, or they have just heard it too many times and the issues get stale. And so I think, in election after election, with the exceptions that Mark mentioned, you do not see the gender gaps that the Democrats would need to pull out wins here.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Just quickly, Mark, do you see anything Republicans need to be particularly worried about? We have talked about Georgia.

• MARK SHIELDS:

  I think Republicans have to be worried about Georgia.

  And Dante Chinni, who has been our demographer on our show, at American University, had a very, very salient point. Georgia has the highest unemployment rate in the country, Judy. And what makes this interesting is that David Perdue, a CEO who offers himself as the only fortune 500 CEO the Senate would have if he's elected, hardly something that voters are really going to stream to the polls on.

  But he, in a deposition, under oath, said — asked about outsourcing, said, yes, I have spent my entire life doing that. Well, Georgia's lost 20 percent of its manufacturing jobs in the last 10 years. And among working-class Georgians, I think there is a resonance there. And I think that could be an issue.

  And I think you have to say that Michelle Nunn has run a very aggressive campaign. As your own piece, she's campaigning very strongly among African-Americans.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Yes, we have reported…

• MARK SHIELDS:

  And the question is, can she get above 30 percent of the white vote?

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  And that's right, to get there. And then we will see about a runoff.

  Just very, very quickly to both of you at the end here, if the Senate goes Republican, David, what difference does it make? What happens or what doesn't happen because you have a different majority in the Senate?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  There will be more judicial fights. There will be more budget fights. Mitch McConnell said they're going to pick some budget fights, to not fund some things President Obama wants.

  But I don't see big changes. Remember, as this landscape this year favors Republicans, because so many red state Democrats are up, in two years, there are a ton of blue-state Republicans up. Those people are not going to want to go out on a conservative limb. So it's going to be a lot harder for Mitch McConnell to govern as a majority leader, if he is one.

• MARK SHIELDS:

  I think what you will see, in addition to that, is you will see a lot of hearings, that there will be a lot of senators….

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Senate hearings.

• MARK SHIELDS:

  … vowing to be the Darrell Issa of the Senate. The busiest person in Washington will be the White House counsel answering subpoenas.

  I think there will be a lot of that. Finally, I think we will see — I expect some sort of a Republican health plan. It's been promised now since Hector was a pup.

  (LAUGHTER)

• MARK SHIELDS:

  Some time after the cooling of the Earth, they are going to have a health plan.

  And now, if they do have control of both the House and the Senate, they have to come up with something, because they want all the goodies and all the positives of Obamacare, but none of the responsibilities and the drawbacks. So, I will be fascinated to see that.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Are we going to see that, David?

• DAVID BROOKS:

  Maybe. I wouldn't — I would look for a tax reform before a health care plan.

  (LAUGHTER)

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  All right.

  David Brooks, Mark Shields, we will see you here next Friday. Thank you.