Is Trump Out of Ideas? How Election Fundamentals Will Impact the Midterms (with Gabe Fleisher)

I’m struggling to find anything that dissuades me from a position I think is probably too aggressive: Democrats are going to ransack. They’re going to pillage. They’re going to take things that aren’t usually theirs. The polling, the energy, and the environment all point in that direction, and I haven’t seen the midair maneuvering Republicans would need to put together a coherent message. Their argument is basically, “You’re really going to turn the keys back over to those guys? They’re lunatics and they’ve learned no lessons.” That’ll work with some of the base, but I don’t think it’ll be enough. I took a random sampling of 15 polls and looked at the five issues Americans say they care about most. Number five is foreign affairs and war. Number four is democracy and democratic values. Number three is healthcare. Number two is immigration. Number one, of course, is the economy. Foreign affairs and war aren’t showing up because people are pumped about the war in Iran. Democracy is an almost entirely Democratic-signifying issue, and voters nearly always trust Democrats more on healthcare. Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Immigration is the first good news for Republicans because nobody trusts Democrats on immigration. Some Democratic voters are worried about overenforcement, and even a Republican congresswoman from Miami has told Trump that he’s listening to the wrong advisers and going too far. But by and large, Republicans can argue that they’re correcting something that’s been wrong for a long time. Then you get to the economy, which is normally sewn into the DNA of the Republican Party. The problem is that when voters say “economy” right now, they mean inflation and gas prices — two areas where things have come in hotter than Trump swore they would. The rest of the top issues include crime, Social Security, housing affordability, government ethics and reform, the SAVE America Act, Trump himself, and abortion. I don’t see many things there that Republicans want to discuss. I see plenty that Democrats would like to discuss because Republicans have taken a position and now have to defend their solutions. It’s easier to run against a problem than defend a solution, and Trump is very good at doing things. He explores every legal option to do a thing, which creates a lot of surface area for Democrats to run against. Across the last 10 midterms, the five most common issues were crime and drugs, immigration, foreign affairs and war, healthcare, and the economy. The economy appeared in every one. But some issues that used to matter have disappeared. Morals and family values were major concerns in 1994, 1998, and 2006, but they’ve completely fallen off the political radar. If anything, shedding the morals-and-family-values label helped make the Republican Party more potent. Gun policy was important in 2018 and 2022 but didn’t make the current top 10. The federal budget deficit made the list only in 1986. Nobody cares about it now, which is why nobody is particularly interested in changing it. In 2018, the top issue was healthcare, followed by immigration, the economy, and gun policy. In 2022, it was inflation, followed by abortion, crime, gun policy, and immigration. This year looks a little more like the Bush era, with foreign wars and foreign policy returning to the center. But the biggest difference is enthusiasm. Democrats are doing jumping jacks, keeping their heart rates up, ready to run through the door like the Kool-Aid Man to vote. I don’t see that same enthusiasm among Republicans, and I don’t see a message telling voters what Republicans will do about the things they care about most — at least not yet. Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:40 - Midterm Issues 00:18:04 - Update 00:19:55 - Paramount Settlement 00:23:09 - Trump and Mamdani 00:27:17 - Trump TV and the Press Pool 00:31:50 - Interview with Gabe Fleisher 01:16:09 - Wrap-up This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/subscribe