The Ben Shapiro Show - November 04, 2026


Here's What the GOP Must Do Next.

Why You Need to Vote Today

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

187.29

Word count

2,288

Sentence count

185


Transcript

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00:00:00.000 What does this mean for the future?
00:00:01.000 Well, I want to start with this.
00:00:03.000 It's dark, man.
00:00:04.000 It's a terrible day if you're a conservative.
00:00:08.000 A lot of deep red states that went blue last night South Carolina and Kansas and Texas, and even places that didn't quite go blue came shockingly close to doing so Tennessee, Florida.
00:00:08.000 Bad day.
00:00:21.000 But this is not the end of the story.
00:00:23.000 There's a tendency whenever your side loses to think, that's it, it's over, it's all done.
00:00:28.000 And then when your side wins, to think, that's it, it's over, it's all done.
00:00:32.000 It is not.
00:00:33.000 I've been in politics for too long for that.
00:00:37.000 I'm old enough to remember in my childhood when Bill Clinton won in 1992, and two years later, the Republicans for the first time in 40 years took over the Congress.
00:00:45.000 I'm also old enough to remember in 2000, when after eight long years of the Clinton administration, the Bush administration came in.
00:00:53.000 And I'm old enough to remember when George W. Bush won a victory in 2004, and by 2006, the Democrats had taken over, and by 2008, Barack Obama was president.
00:01:01.000 And I remember when two years after that, the Republicans blew him out in the Congress.
00:01:06.000 And I think we're all old enough to remember when in 2016, Barack Obama left office having to hand the keys to Donald Trump.
00:01:14.000 And then when Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, and then when he won again.
00:01:17.000 So, in other words, this is not the end of the story.
00:01:20.000 It hurts.
00:01:21.000 It's really bad.
00:01:22.000 But this is not the end of the story.
00:01:24.000 There are a lot of twists and turns here, and there are a lot of players in the game.
00:01:28.000 Our friends and sponsors over at Calchee are looking at the U.S. presidential election winner.
00:01:35.000 The favorite right now is John Asaf from Georgia.
00:01:38.000 Asaf had a really good election night last night.
00:01:40.000 He's a good looking sort of Obama esque figure in Georgia.
00:01:44.000 I still have my doubts that Democrats are going to nominate somebody of Jewish extraction for their nomination.
00:01:50.000 But Asaf is leading at 18%, but JD Vance is at 15%.
00:01:53.000 And the vice president of the United States is a Republican.
00:01:57.000 So a lot of uncertainty out there.
00:02:00.000 It's still really, really, really early, in other words.
00:02:03.000 Well, here was the vice president talking about his own low approval rating and the approval rating of the administration.
00:02:10.000 Your approval rating is currently underwater.
00:02:13.000 Do you think you have enough time in the administration to turn that around?
00:02:17.000 I don't think that much about that stuff.
00:02:19.000 First of all, that stuff's all based on polling that we found a number of times in the past have been untrue.
00:02:25.000 But I just try to do my job.
00:02:27.000 And obviously, the American people can make the judgments they're going to make.
00:02:30.000 We just need to do good things for the American people.
00:02:32.000 And if we do that, I think the politics will work itself out.
00:02:34.000 Okay, well, in order for the politics to work itself out, you're going to have to look at the actual demographics on the ground.
00:02:40.000 The biggest issue for the Republicans going forward is not a state level issue.
00:02:43.000 I think in a presidential election, again, presidential electorates look different than midterm electorates.
00:02:48.000 In a presidential election, Texas is unlikely to go blue.
00:02:51.000 It's possible, but it's unlikely.
00:02:54.000 What you have to look at is the demographic swings, and you have to form a coalition where the votes are.
00:02:58.000 And this means taking different tacks.
00:03:01.000 So, just to take an example, the Hispanic vote last night went heavily against the Republicans.
00:03:06.000 Hispanics voted Harris plus six in 2024, they voted Democrat plus 27 in 2026.
00:03:13.000 That swing.
00:03:14.000 Consisted of 2.7 million net votes, and those were heavily concentrated in Texas, which is why Texas went blue.
00:03:22.000 Gen Z men, who everyone is very focused on, they voted D plus 33 last night after voting Trump plus one in 2024, but they are a shrinking percentage of the electorate.
00:03:33.000 There aren't that many of them.
00:03:34.000 So that swing was about 2 million net votes.
00:03:37.000 Millennial men swung to the left as well.
00:03:42.000 They went Trump plus 20 in 2024.
00:03:45.000 And R plus six in 2026.
00:03:48.000 So they shifted 14 points to the left, but still majority Republican.
00:03:50.000 So again, there are places for Republicans to fish.
00:03:55.000 And the electorate is aging.
00:03:57.000 So, again, everyone likes to focus on the young in the elections, but the reality is that 35% of the electorate in 2026 was over the age of 65.
00:04:04.000 Okay, so again, is this the end of the story?
00:04:10.000 No, but there's not a lot of room for error.
00:04:12.000 I'm going to show you a very scary map now.
00:04:14.000 Okay, this is a map of what a presidential election could look like if Republicans don't figure things out.
00:04:22.000 Okay, this is if Texas turned blue.
00:04:25.000 This is assuming Arizona turns blue, Georgia turns blue, North Carolina stays blue.
00:04:29.000 Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire all go blue.
00:04:34.000 If that were to happen, Democrats would have a 382 to 156 electoral college advantage, which is scary.
00:04:40.000 I get it.
00:04:42.000 It's terrifying because the Democrats are a parody that is out of control.
00:04:45.000 There's a permission structure for pretty much every piece of radicalism.
00:04:48.000 But listen, I have faith in the Democrats to screw it up.
00:04:50.000 I have faith in them.
00:04:51.000 They do it every time.
00:04:53.000 I have faith that they will do a bunch of dumb things that make them more unpopular.
00:04:57.000 But that's not enough.
00:04:58.000 That's not enough.
00:05:00.000 The GOP can't just be the anti-democratic party party.
00:05:04.000 That's not enough.
00:05:05.000 We tried that in this election cycle.
00:05:08.000 It turns out that unaffordability, chaos, and corruption is a bad formula, even if you're running against a pro-terror candidate like Abdullah el-Sayed or a kind of nutty person like James Tallarico.
00:05:20.000 So, Republicans need to offer something new.
00:05:22.000 Here's the thing: we're reaching the end of the age of Trump.
00:05:25.000 Trump still has two years in office, he's still the president with all the power that entails.
00:05:28.000 And that means he's going to have an awful big say in what happens for the next couple of years.
00:05:33.000 The conversation that's being had in the halls of power right now, and I think homes across America, is what ought the conservative movement to look like if there is a conservative movement.
00:05:44.000 It was fragmented by the Trump years for sure because Trump is a non ideological president and a non ideological person.
00:05:51.000 But what must Republicans do?
00:05:52.000 Well, why don't we start from what we know?
00:05:56.000 If this election was, as I suggest, about unaffordability, chaos, and corruption, we have to be not Chaotic.
00:06:03.000 Let's start with that.
00:06:05.000 We can't be chaotic.
00:06:07.000 There was a time in American politics where dignity actually mattered.
00:06:11.000 Doesn't mean you have to be inauthentic, but it does mean that randomly bouncing from place to place while pretending that the laws of political gravity do not apply is not a way to build coalitions that have durable and lasting effect.
00:06:23.000 You can't do that.
00:06:24.000 You actually have to have a policy.
00:06:25.000 You have to calmly implement that policy.
00:06:28.000 You have to make people incrementally buy into that policy.
00:06:33.000 Conservatism of character that has been lost over the course of years, largely because, of course, the radicalism of the left has driven people to the idea that in this moment we must do everything all at once right now.
00:06:46.000 The problem is the American people rebel against that and then they undo everything that you just tried to do.
00:06:51.000 Incrementalism, gradualism, building of consensus, right?
00:06:56.000 These are things you have to do.
00:06:58.000 You have to be solid about how you approach policy.
00:07:02.000 You can't just bounce from tree to tree, picking every apple from every tree.
00:07:07.000 On unaffordability, we have to actually talk about what creates affordability, not a basket of policies and not a bunch of bowl about how you're going to soft sell welfarism, but just Republican version.
00:07:20.000 We have to actually talk openly about what creates affordability.
00:07:24.000 What creates affordability on planet Earth is private property and equal rule of the law and free markets at home that generate new wealth, not gigantic social welfare systems, not ignoring long term debts.
00:07:40.000 It means on the foreign policy front stability.
00:07:43.000 It means moral decisiveness.
00:07:44.000 It means if you're going to enter a war, you win it and you win it as fast as humanly possible.
00:07:47.000 It means that we do have an interest in maintaining the freedom of the seas and the lanes of commerce.
00:07:52.000 That's the stuff that creates affordability.
00:07:55.000 It means not inflating the currency because you wish to spend or because you're too cowardly to take on social programs that are already bankrupt.
00:08:04.000 And on corruption, it means that you have to wipe it out completely and fight it everywhere you see it, even when it's on your own side.
00:08:11.000 You can't wink and nod at it just because pursuit of power.
00:08:15.000 So you might put those these way truth, freedom, virtue.
00:08:21.000 You could do that.
00:08:23.000 You could do that.
00:08:25.000 That is what Republicans need to do.
00:08:26.000 Someone needs to articulate these messages.
00:08:28.000 The president is a gut check patriot.
00:08:32.000 And that gut check patriotism was a wonderful antithesis to Barack Obama's gut check anti patriotism.
00:08:41.000 Barack Obama had a sort of articulate worldview that he would never quite say about America's place in the world.
00:08:47.000 And President Trump came in and he said, listen, I love the flag.
00:08:49.000 I love apple pie.
00:08:51.000 I love motherhood.
00:08:51.000 I love America.
00:08:53.000 I love baseline America.
00:08:55.000 That impulse is a good impulse.
00:08:55.000 And you know what?
00:08:59.000 But whatever comes next has to explain why.
00:09:02.000 What about America is good?
00:09:04.000 What about America is the thing that matters?
00:09:07.000 Not just that the left is threatening.
00:09:08.000 Sure.
00:09:09.000 What is it they're threatening?
00:09:10.000 What is the thing we have to maintain?
00:09:11.000 You cannot challenge socialism with softer socialism.
00:09:13.000 You cannot challenge foreign policy cowardice with slightly lesser foreign policy cowardice.
00:09:19.000 You cannot challenge a bizarre social policy.
00:09:25.000 That basically values libertinism by saying that the real problem is our economic system.
00:09:32.000 You can't, that is not going, it's a dog that's not going to hunt.
00:09:34.000 Now, maybe that's a conversation that will be had.
00:09:36.000 Listen, everyone will argue about it and really yell about it.
00:09:40.000 But the reality is that what the American people are crying out for, and you can't take this election out of context.
00:09:47.000 I described earlier how we're bouncing place to place in the elections.
00:09:49.000 We are.
00:09:50.000 Every couple of years, we're just bouncing like a ping pong ball.
00:09:53.000 What the American people are seeking.
00:09:55.000 What they are seeking from their political class is predictability, stability, and abiding belief in basic American principles like freedom and truth and virtue.
00:10:07.000 That is what they are asking for.
00:10:08.000 They are begging for it.
00:10:10.000 And if they don't find it here, they'll shift over there.
00:10:12.000 And when they don't find it there, they'll shift back over here.
00:10:14.000 And that will continue until morale improves.
00:10:18.000 The beatings will continue until morale improves.
00:10:20.000 So, to all the Democrats who think this is the end of the road, it is not.
00:10:23.000 Don't worry, you guys will screw it up.
00:10:25.000 And there will be a backlash to that.
00:10:27.000 But to my fellow Republicans and conservatives who actually care about the future of the country and care about America's place in the world and care about what we look like, not just a year from now or six months from now, but a hundred years from now, it's time to get real about the things that ought to motivate us to be in politics in the first place.
00:10:45.000 What are the values that we hold dear?
00:10:47.000 What are the truths that we hold to be self evident?
00:10:50.000 You know, in the Declaration of Independence, it talks about truths.
00:10:53.000 It says we hold these truths to be self evident.
00:10:55.000 That does not mean that the truths are.
00:10:57.000 Of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are in fact self evident.
00:11:00.000 That's not what that means.
00:11:01.000 It doesn't mean that anyone at any time can reason their way to the principles of the American Declaration.
00:11:07.000 What it means is that for our country to function, there are certain principles that must be held in such high regard that violation of them would be to violate the sacred.
00:11:16.000 And those principles, again, I suggest are truth, freedom, and virtue.
00:11:19.000 That's where it is.
00:11:20.000 And if you're not preaching those things, if what you're preaching instead is venality, casual, Schmidtian oppositionalism.
00:11:31.000 If what you're preaching is corruption for my friends and the law for my enemies, if what you're preaching is cowardice against our enemies abroad and claims that that cowardice is somehow enriching to Americans at home, if that is the stuff that you're preaching, that is not, maybe you'll win power on that basis.
00:11:50.000 People win power on a lot of bases.
00:11:51.000 As we saw last night, there are a lot of awful people who can win high power in the United States.
00:11:55.000 But the whole point of politics is to preserve the things that matter.
00:11:59.000 What are those things that matter?
00:12:01.000 And how are Republicans going to stand up for them?
00:12:02.000 That's the big question.
00:12:04.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:12:06.000 Wasn't that amazing?
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