Leahy and Gulbransen Examine Temperature-Taking Polls and the Mainstream Media’s Investment in the Democratic Party

Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed official guest host and lead political reporter for The Tennessee Star Aaron Gulbransen in-studio to review current polls and mainstream media’s push for the Democratic party.

Leahy: We are joined in-studio by the one and only official guest host of The Tennessee Star, lead political reporter for The Tennessee Star, Mr. Aaron Gulbransen. Good morning, Aaron.

Gulbransen: Good morning, sir. How are you?

Leahy: Well, here’s the thing. If you listen to the mainstream media, which I don’t really recommend for your mental health.

Gulbransen: We kind of have to.

Leahy: We have to. We’ll do it so our listeners don’t have to do it. But there’s a buzz out there, and much of the buzz is coming from German-owned Politico, right? And the buzz is, you know, maybe, just maybe, the Democrats are going to be able to keep control of the House of Representatives.

And they argue that the lunatic Left base of the Democratic Party is energized by the Dobbs decision, which put the question of abortion back where it should have been, back with the states.

So they’re motivated by that. And then very aggressively, the divider in chief, or the grifter in chief, or the actual legal but not legitimate president of the United States, Joe Biden, is aggressively attacking every Republican out there, not just Donald Trump, but every Republican, trying to demonize them.

He’s apparently going to hold a political rally, a national speech this week sometime where he is going to talk about the soul of America and talk about how all the rights and privileges are in question. He’s talking about abortion rights. The guy who’s really restricting all the individual rights of Americans today is Joe Biden.

Gulbransen: Yeah!

Leahy: That guy. Okay, so let’s be clear-headed about this. What, in your opinion – you’ve done 20 years of political campaign management, 20 years, so you know what you’re doing. What are the odds right now that the Democrats … what’s your breakdown? 220 to 215, something like that.

Gulbransen: A couple of vacancies.

Leahy: Like 220 to 213 with a couple of vacancies, they’ve got a very narrow control of the House of Representatives. What are the odds that they might keep the House of Representatives?

Gulbransen: Zero. Kevin McCarthy is going to be the new Speaker of the House come January. The real drama and the real question is going to be the Senate, right? Because the Republicans and the conservatives did not nominate the most optimal people in several different states for the U.S. Senate. But the House, I mean, look at Cook Political Report right now.

I’m staring at this. If the election were to happen today, they have 188 solid Republican seats. They have 15 likely Republican, and they have 11 lean Republican and 25 Democrat seats that are rated a toss-up.

And so what you’re going to see is, the media is carrying water right now and might as well be getting a commission to the Democrat donor base right now because they’re parroting things that are keeping the Democrat donor base active.

Leahy: Yeah, so that’s a very good point. I’m looking at Real Clear Politics, and they’ve got the current House at 221 Democrats and 212 Republicans with two vacancies, right? So basically you need 218 to have a majority right now.

And they look at the map and it will be very interesting here. They’ve got 34 toss-ups, 182 likely or lean Democrat, 219 likely or lean Republican. By the way, TN-5, which is the big new district here in Tennessee, the one that had the very heavily contested GOP primary, the district that has been created to go from a D plus-20 to an R plus-11 or something like that.

Gulbransen: Depending on what you’re looking at.

Leahy: Which now includes the southern part of the southern third of Davidson County, western half of Wilson County, the eastern half of Williamson. All of Maury, Marshall and Lewis. Andy Ogles, the mayor of Maury County, easily won that primary by about 11 points, besting all of his competitors. The Real Clear Politics lists TN-5 as likely Republican. I think that’s probably correct.

Gulbransen: Yes. And I mean Cook Political – and we’re not talking about any conservative outlet as we’re speaking here, they have it as a solid Republican, which it is.

Leahy: Now, let’s go back also to this, the 34 tossups. Now they’ve got a 219 Republican, 182 Democrat with 34 toss-ups. 219 is one more than the 218 that you need. Now the generic polls have gone from, they went from Republican plus-4 or 5 down to even-Steven, a couple for a bit, had Democrats up by one.

Now, the Real Clear Politics averages of the generic poll for who would you vote for the House has Republicans up by eight-tenths of a percent. But generic doesn’t matter.

Gulbransen: It’s a temperature taker, right?

Leahy: Yes. A flawed temperature taker.

Gulbransen: If you’ve noticed, as we’ve had to pay attention to this, there was a period of time some months ago – and it’s completely flipped within the last three to four weeks – but there was a period of time where even the mainstream media was starting to say, the Biden administration is in the doldrums, they’re screwing up, blah, blah, blah.

And then it’s, zip, a memo went out on a dime, going, well, it’s about to be crunch time. Now we have to engage in what I consider poll manipulation, because now they’re talking about all the Biden administration victories …

Leahy: I read this piece from German-owned Politico yesterday, and I said, this is obviously written by a Democratic operative. It started with something – I’m going to paraphrase it. And if you’re taking a drink of your tea or coffee, don’t drink while I’m telling you this, otherwise we’ll get the famous spit take on it.

(Laughter) They said this with a straight face at German-owned Politico. (Serious voice) No modern president in recent history has had as good an August as Joe Biden. (Laughs) How can you take an alleged news story like that with a straight face is just ridiculous.

Gulbransen: I mean, also based on what barometer? But yeah, that’s just ridiculous. Let’s see, I can think of … there’s presidents who have gotten Supreme Court justices through in August, I’m sure. That’s a big deal.

Listen to the interview:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.