Music

And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with your host, David Axelrod.

Major Garrett, Chief Washington Correspondent for CBS News has been covering government of politics and print and on TV for decades.

I did a podcast with him a few years back about his life and career, but I wanted to get together with him again this week to talk about the trials of American democracy a week before a portentous midterm election.

And the book he recently co-authored, The Big Truth, a holding democracy in the age of the big lie. Here's that conversation.

Major Garrett, it's great to see you again, my friend. We meet at a portentous time, one week before or six days before the big midterm election.

So, who better to speak with than you at a time like this? We've been through many of these together.

We have. You have written a book The Big Truth of Holding Democracy in the age of the big lie. You do this with David Becker, who's an expert on election administration and a lot of these issues.

I want to talk about that, but I want to talk about it in the context of this midterm election, because this is sort of the shadow that's hanging over these elections.

So, and anybody who wants to know major stories should go back and listen to our last podcast together, because he has a deep and rich story and journalism.

I want to talk about the state of journalism and political coverage as well in this conversation.

But give me your sense of where we are six days out before these midterm elections, and I'll share mine.

So, I was just in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the weekend, and I talked to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who was there on behalf of the Democratic Governor, Michelle Lueh, on Grisham.

And he's not doesn't have a close reelection race, but he was there because she does. And that's kind of a surprise. And I said, our Democrats on defense, he said, yeah.

And I said, does it feel to you like a red wave? He said, yes, it does. He said, I'm not paid to say that I'm supposed to be the cheerful optimist, but I'm also a pragmatist. He said, I'm looking at the data, but I can also feel it.

I said, where does it look like in California? He said there are four house races in California that five or six weeks ago weren't competitive, but are now.

That's just one voice, but Governor Newsom has just gone through a recall election in California a year ago.

So he is in the mix of this environment. He lived through what he prevailed on that recap with the help of a lot of Democrats nationally, poured a lot of money and a lot of attention into that race. He pulled through. He's now in a much better political position, but he's scanning the sort of horizon.

And he feels like the shift that has begun to exhibit itself in polls is very real. And in the last week or two, inflation, public safety, the persistent issue of immigration, which among Republican voters and some swing voters simply never goes away are coalescing to counter what was for two or three months substantial grassroots energy within Democrats up in reaction to the adoption of returning Rovers' weight.

As you know, David, there is an ebb and flow in political conversations. There's an ebb and flow in momentum. And after the adopt decision, Democrats who were really, really down on the domes, Biden's numbers were way down. They didn't seem to have any either messaging or set of accomplishments.

They could point to got a little bit of a message, put some accomplishments on the board and began to narrow the gap and felt that there was a possibility of pushing back against what looked like a red tide or a red wave. That optimism has begun to diminish.

That certainly I think of the case more precisely in house races. I think in Senate races, it's very close, but I don't need to tell you David, you've lived this on both sides of the equation.

...