Amy Walter
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, Cook Political Report
“We have been living in a time of such deep polarization. It is so hardened that even in one of the worst political environments a party has had going into a midterm, a president at 38%, opinions of his handling of inflation underwater by 50 points, an unpopular war, gas and diesel prices spiking, all of these things in another era would have produced an absolute tidal wave.”
The Bulwark · Policy · October 2026
Context
Four days before the midterms, Amy Walter was discussing why Democrats are competitive in deep-red Senate states, and why partisan loyalties are now so locked in that even a bad environment doesn't produce the swings it once did.
Transcript
The southern states are harder. Exactly. The southern states are harder because it's already, yeah, the racial piece already sort of locks it in to be inelastic.
That's right. But Darlene Graham is a terrible candidate, and Annie Andrews is a pretty good candidate, quite a good candidate.
There are two ways. There's the glass half empty, glass, half full way of seeing this. If you are a Democrat, the glass half empty is, oh my gosh, at the end, all of these could, right, to your point, revert back to the mean that these reluctant Republicans. Republicans do end up showing up and barely eke out wins in these deep red states. The glass half full is, oh my God, Kansas, South Carolina, Alaska, Texas, right? These shouldn't, we shouldn't even be talking about these states. And that the fact that we are tells you that this, regardless of what happens, that the coalition that Trump put together has frayed and it's not clear if it's going to come back. Right. And if this were just purple states that were up for grabs in the Senate, this would have been a much easier task for Democrats. But to win in these kinds of states, it would be the equivalent of such a bad year for Democrats that they lose like Rhode Island. Yeah, that's right. Or Oregon, states that used to be competitive, just like Ohio and Texas used to elect Democrats. Oregon and Rhode Island used to elect Republicans. Those states just haven't been in play because the polarization is so…
book about it. My whole book, How to Eat an Elephant One Voter at a Time, is how you maximize this scenario and you drive it into the future to bury MAGA in the ash heap of history. And this is the necessary but insufficient sort of first step. And like the extent to which I think Democrats have…
other thing I was going to say about just what the map looks like at the end of the day, it's going back to the point you made of, oh my gosh, given everything we just said about the political environment and the president's approval rating and the economy, if Democrats don't succeed, then in this…
I actually think to put MAGA down and to have a future that sort of repudiates MAGA and sees it as not a good strategy, I think you need to make enormous gains in this election. And so, and I think you need to do it in all kinds of different places. And I also agree, like, Democrats need to start…
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