'This is an earthquake': Strategist warns town hall furor signals midterm disaster for GOP

Democrats can expect an “earthquake” election in the coming midterms, according to political strategist Paul Begala who predicted on CNN Tuesday that the party could win in a “40-seat landslide” due to fallout from current Republican leadership.

A former advisor to President Bill Clinton, Begala was featured on a CNN News Central with host John Berman, who asked Begala his thoughts on a Monday night town hall by Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) at which the GOP lawmaker was angrily shouted down by constituents.

“Remember last week there was a terrible earthquake off the coast of Russia, and it took a long time before tsunami waves hit?” Begala asked. “This is an earthquake, this is coming. The Republicans are looking at a wave election.”

Flood’s town hall went off the rails after he tried to boast about the recently passed budget reconciliation bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, which included significant tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and cutbacks to Medicaid and food assistance.

Begala likened the current political climate to Trump’s first term ahead of the midterm elections, where Republicans would go on to lose dozens of House seats in large part due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which saw majority disapproval from Americans.

“This is what happened the last time; (in) 2017, they cut taxes for the rich and tried to end Obamacare, and they failed,” Begala said.

“They lost 41 House seats in the next election. This combination of this bill where they cut taxes for the rich, exploded the debt, and cut health care for working people, that's not going to fly man, that's just not! I'm telling you, it's going to be a 40-seat landslide, and the Republicans in Congress, I think, know it.”

Also featured alongside Begala was Bryan Lanza, former deputy communications director for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, who argued Republicans’ vulnerabilities were less of substance, and more on messaging.

“There's a lot of good things in the One Big Beautiful Bill, and there's a lot of bad things that the Democrats can use,” Lanza said. “The bottom line is that our message needs to be louder, our message needs to be clearer, and our message needs to point to the pocket books and say 'if we didn't do this, this is how much taxes would have been raised.'”

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