Steve Bannon Concedes GOP Faces 'God Awful' Midterm Risk: 'Assume We're Losing'

Steve Bannon told his War Room audience on Wednesday that Republicans are in for "a very tough fight to hold the House and in the Senate," a rare concession from a host who usually frames the midterms as a coming MAGA victory.

The former White House chief strategist invoked Cook Political Report founder Charlie Cook's three scenarios for the party and told listeners to plan for defeat, saying grassroots organizers in Texas "should just assume we're losing and you're gonna have to win."

"There's gonna be a very tough fight to hold the House and in the Senate. And people are saying all the House is, you know, Cook saying he got three scenarios, bad, very bad and God awful," Bannon said.

What Charlie Cook Actually Wrote

Bannon's paraphrase was close. In a September 3 essay titled "When a nightmare scenario becomes the most likely scenario," Cook laid out three outcomes he called "bad," "really bad" and "truly horrible." The "bad" case costs Republicans 15 to 25 House seats; the "really bad" case, which Cook called the most likely, costs them 26 to 35 House seats and four or five Senate seats; the "truly horrible" case adds a net Senate loss of at least six seats.

Cook told The New Republic's Greg Sargent on September 8 that the middle scenario, which would flip both chambers, now looks like the most probable outcome, and that races in Alaska, Iowa and Texas are competitive in ways he had not seen before.

The national numbers back up the pessimism. President Donald Trump's approval sits at 38.3 percent approve to 58.7 percent disapprove in PolitiKool's polling average, and Democrats lead the generic congressional ballot by 6.9 points in PolitiKool's polling average. PolitiKool rates control of the Senate a toss-up with six toss-up races.

Bannon did not dispute the odds. He argued instead that the calendar still leaves room to change them.

"But this is, we still got 40 days, 40 days in a wake up, right? So we got a lot of time, we can get things done. The future is not written. You write your own future with human agency and I understand there's long odds, but we'll, there is help on the way," he said.

Texas Is a 'Must Win,' Bannon Says

Much of the segment centered on Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton, who beat Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary, is trailing Democratic state Representative James Talarico in every recent public poll.

"Texas is a must win, obviously others," Bannon said, adding that the party's outside money is arriving. "Ken Paxton's got a real fight on his hands. Plus, there's a bunch of house seats down there. The governor's virtually tied."

The air cover Bannon described is real. The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate Republican leadership, has raised its Texas commitment to $100 million, booking $30 million in new ads on top of nearly $70 million already spent, the Texas Tribune reported Tuesday.Bannon said a Texas Southern University poll "shows we're in a little better shape." That survey, released Tuesday by the university's Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center, found Talarico at 47 percent and Paxton at 46 percent among 1,800 likely voters surveyed September 15 to 19, inside its 2.31-point margin of error. It also found that 99 percent of Democrats back Talarico while 84 percent of Republicans back Paxton.

An Emerson College Polling/Nexstar Media survey released Thursday produced the identical 47-46 split. A University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll conducted August 5 to 13 had Talarico ahead 42 percent to 39 percent, with independents preferring Talarico 37 percent to 11 percent.

The Texas Southern figures are marginally better for Paxton than the August University of Texas survey, which is consistent with Bannon's framing. But they do not show him ahead. PolitiKool's polling average has Talarico up 3.4 points, 46.3 percent to 42.9 percent, and Republican Governor Greg Abbott leads Democrat Gina Hinojosa by 1.8 points in the governor's race.

Bannon's 'Base Plus' Theory

Bannon's turnout diagnosis rests on a specific read of the electorate: that Trump's 2024 voters are not defecting so much as disengaging.

"There may not be people just that are upset and voting against Trump. They just may be staying home," he said. "If that theory works out, then it gets back to what I've said is a base plus."

His guest Danielle Buck, head of strategic partnerships at the conservative wireless carrier Patriot Mobile, said Texas grassroots urgency has "never been higher because the stakes have never been higher." She urged pastors to tell congregations to vote and described Talarico as the product of "brainwashing" aimed at young Christian women.

"He wants to open our borders. He wants to trans our kids," Buck said, calling a Talarico win "an atrocity for Texas." Bannon, for his part, said Talarico "would be one of the most radical people ever to serve the United States Senate."

Those characterizations are campaign framing rather than established fact, and the Texas Politics Project's own analysis points to a different problem for the GOP. In a May 8 report, directors James Henson and Joshua Blank found that 26 percent of Texas Republicans were undecided or uncommitted after the primary, warning that "the brutality of the Cornyn-Paxton fight threatens the ability of the state's long-running majority party to reunify its base."

What Happens Next

Bannon said the show would cover a federal court hearing at noon Wednesday, where CNN, MS NOW and Politico asked U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly to restore the White House press credentials Trump revoked Friday. Kelly appeared skeptical of the administration's position and said he would rule as soon as possible, NBC News reported.

The midterm math, meanwhile, will be tested first in Texas. Early voting in the state begins in October, and Bannon's own instruction to organizers was blunt: assume the worst and outwork it.

"I understand there's long odds," he said.