Senator Ted Cruz: Why Democrats May Sweep the 2020 Elections

WASHINGTON, D.C. — “I’m worried about 2020, I think it’s 50-50. I think it’s a coin flip,” said Ted Cruz, the Republican U.S. Senator from Texas. The 2020 presidential race happens when the country is “deeply divided.” “It is an incredibly polarized country,” he said. “I think it all comes down to turnout.”

“I think the Left is going to show up in massive numbers,” he continued. “And it all comes down to who shows up on the center-right.”

Ted Cruz was on the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday when, 45-minutes into the interview, Shapiro asked Cruz for his assessment of the 2020 election cycle. That is when Cruz warned that the Democrats could sweep both houses of congress and win the presidency. Then they will proceed to perform great harm to the country, he said.

He predicted the winner of the Democrat Party primaries and nominee would not be a moderate candidate like Joe Biden.

“I think the Democrats will nominate someone from the far left,” Cruz predicted. He said one of four declared candidates, between Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, or Elizabeth Warren, will win the Democrat Party nomination to run for president. He gave an outside chance that Pete Buttigieg could emerge in the final four. “He’s stolen some of Beto’s thunder,” he said.

What about Beto?

Cruz’s narrow re-election for U.S. Senate in 2018 against Democrat Robert “Beto” O’Rourke provides a crystal ball of what is about to happen during the general election in 2020, Cruz said.

The media was “all in” for O’Rourke, Cruz said. Cruz said O’Rourke’s campaign raised over $80 million and outspent the Cruz for Senate campaign 3-to-1. “Money is the tool a candidate uses to communicate and [having lots of money to spend] is particularly important when the media is for the other side,” he said.

Cruz said his 2018 campaign for re-election to the U.S. Senate had 18 fulltime staffers. In contrast, by Election Day in November 2018, O’Rourke’s campaign had 805 staffers.

“The Democrats increased their turnout in Texas by more than 100 percent,” Cruz stressed. In previous elections this decade, 1.8 million Texas Democrats voted. In 2018, that number swelled to 4 million Democrats. Cruz eked out 4.2 million Republican votes and the margin of victory was only 200,000 votes, Cruz said.

“That’s what we’re going to see in 2020. Every Leftist is going to show up at the polls and they will crawl over broken glass to get there. They hate Donald Trump with a white-hot passion. You’re going to see Democrats in areas where you didn’t know there were any Democrats. They’re going to crawl out of the woodwork,” he said.

Texas is officially a battleground state, Cruz said. In recent elections leading up to 2018, the urban city centers of Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio were Democrat Party strongholds while the suburban areas that ringed the city centers were Republican. He called these the “red donuts” of suburban voters that kept Texas decidedly Republican for two-and-a-half decades. That changed in 2018. Suburban women in particular moved from Republican candidates to Democrats, Cruz said. The rings around the urban centers are now purple.

In post-election analysis of 2018, it was noted that Cruz replaced voters lost in suburban areas with higher turnout in the rural Panhandle of Texas. By 2020, there may not be enough votes there to overcome a Democrat onslaught in the suburbs. “Two-thirds of Texas voters are in the major metro areas,” Cruz said of DFW, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. “We have massive suburban populations.”

Shapiro asked what will happen if Democrats sweep the House, Senate and White House in 2020. If Trump loses, Cruz predicted there was a very good chance Democrats will win control of the Senate too.

If that happens, we will see structural changes to make Democrat Party rule perpetual for the distant future, Cruz warned.

We will see the Trump tax cuts immediately repealed and taxes increased substantially. This is especially true if Democrats are elected under the “angry howl of socialism,” Cruz said.

Democrats will end the filibuster within a month of taking control of the U.S. Senate, Cruz predicted. Then no legislation will require a single Republican vote.

“You will see a massive open borders proposal all designed to insure Democratic control,” Cruz said. Democrats will grant amnesty to every one of the 12-14 million people estimated to be here illegally. Democrats will then grant each one of them citizenship as quickly as possible to harvest their votes for Democrat Party candidates.

Trump won the presidency by only 180,000 votes, Cruz said.

Cruz gave an example of how amnesty will work nationwide. California formerly was the heart of the Republican Party. That state voted in six consecutive presidential elections for the Republican candidate, Cruz noted. “California gave us Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon,” Cruz added.

But, in 1987, Reagan compromised with Congress and signed into law amnesty for just 3 million illegal aliens residing in our country then. The result? “The last election California voted Republican was 1988,” Cruz said. “It has gone Democrat every election since then.”

Pew Research statistics state that California today has 2.2 million of the estimated 10.7 million illegal immigrants Pew said were in the U.S. in 2016, or about 20 percent.

“If Democrats take control, they will endeavor to do that (grant amnesty) to the whole country so that no Republican can win again,” Cruz warned.

Compound registering 12-14 million illegal immigrants to vote with laws to guarantee the rights of convicted felons to vote, even from jail, and no Republican will stand a chance of winning a national election into the far future.

Cruz predicted if Democrats control the White House and both houses of congress that they will stack the Supreme Court to eliminate by dilution the Trump conservative majority. Democrats are already embracing the proposal to expand the size of the court from nine justices to 15, Cruz said.

“If Democrats appointed six new justices immediately, you will see a radical left-wing court,” Cruz warned.

Cruz’s warning to Republicans was that if the party fails to energize its base and attract common sense citizens whose outlook is near the center-right, the Left would sweep the 2020 elections.

“The Left… They are ‘all-in’,” Cruz said. But when Republicans controlled both houses of congress and the White House, “They were like Thurston Howell,” Cruz said, referencing the stoic millionaire stranded on Gilligan’s Island. “Goodness, we wouldn’t want to do anything like that,” Cruz said in a voice mimicking the character on the popular 1960s TV show.

Cruz said Republicans missed the opportunity to implement game-changing legislation in 2017 and 2018. Among them:

• The Trump tax cuts aren’t permanent and will sunset in the future
• The border wall isn’t funded
• Cruz said Obamacare is wreaking havoc on health insurance premiums for middle class Americans and congress could have passed reforms to attract more competition. Instead, congress reached for complete repeal where, if not for the nay vote from former U.S. Senator from Arizona John McCain, would have passed. Then the Republicans just dropped any movement on fixing Obamacare, even if incrementally.

Cruz said he advocated for these measures that he called transformative in the waning days of the Republican majorities in 2018 to no avail. Leadership didn’t want to upset the applecart.

“We need to have the same zealotry for freedom that the Left has for government,” Cruz argued.

Those opportunities are no longer available with Democrat control of the House. Now, America sits on the eve of a dramatic shift to the left if Trump and the Republicans lose in 2020.

“If they take control, particularly if they get the Senate too, it is unbelievably dangerous,” Cruz concluded.

You can listen to the entire interview by Ben Shapiro with Senator Ted Cruz at the Daily Wire. Cruz’s comments about the 2020 election begin 45 minutes into the show.