Hello there, Chuck Todd. This is the Chuck Todd cast. For most of the year, we've been

repeating the conventional wisdom that a president's party usually loses seat

sternum at term election. But the recent special elections post-dobs and primary

results are starting to make us question whether that trend will hold this

November and it's worth noting there have been a couple of exceptions to this

rule in the last at least in my lifetime. It was 1998-2002. So joining me today,

former Republican Congressman Tom Davis from Virginia, former Democratic

Congressman Mark Frost from Texas, Tom Davis served in the House from 95 to

08 was chairman of the NRSC during the 2002 midterm.

Mark Frost served in the House from 7905 and he was chair of the Democratic

the D-Triple C during the 98 midterms. Gentlemen, welcome to the

Toddcast. It's good to get you guys back together. A little frost in Davis.

Yeah, we're available. So Martin, look, you've been

pinging me about this and you know, when a worm turns, it turns and let's talk

about 98. When did you first see that this was not going to be an ordinary

midterm? If memory serves, it was pretty late that we saw this break.

Yeah, I can't honestly say that I saw it at any particular time. However,

I'd been chairman in 96 and we picked up seats in 96, didn't take the house back.

And I was not going to stand still and accept conventional wisdom.

So we worked like hell and then we got lucky at the end. That's what's

regretting. We did all the right things and if we hadn't gotten lucky and I'll

talk about that in a minute, we probably wouldn't have picked up seats.

...