A Blue Week

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  This year's elections have turned out badly for the GOP.

Julia Manchester at The Hill:

Republicans are feeling spooked by recent special elections losses and underperformances in party strongholds, as the White House ramps up President Trump’s presence on the campaign trail ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

On Tuesday, Democrats flipped Miami’s mayoral office for the first time in nearly 30 years and won a conservative-leaning state House district in Georgia that Trump carried by 12 points last year.

Those victories came after Republicans gave up ground to Democrats in a special election for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District last week and lost by wide margins in Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races last month.

Republicans note that while the off-year gubernatorial losses were not necessarily a surprise, upsets in GOP strongholds such as Miami and the Georgia state House district have them on edge.

“Republicans losing in Republican areas? That’s a different story. I think that’s got people freaking out,” one former Trump White House staffer said

Andrew Egger at The Bulwark:

“It’s not a secret. There’s no sugarcoating it. It’s a pending, looming disaster heading our way.”

“We are facing almost certain defeat.”

“The chances are Republicans will go down and will go down hard.”

“You hit the nail on the head. This is an absolute disaster. No matter what party is in power, they usually get crushed in the midterms.”

These pessimistic assessments of Republicans’ chances in next year’s midterms are the sort of thing you’d expect to hear from disgruntled GOP operatives outside the MAGA camp. This week, however, they’ve been coming from someone way crazier: Joe Gruters, the Trump-diehard chair of the Republican National Committee, who has been barnstorming conservative radio this week.1

Gruters isn’t throwing Trump under the bus. Quite the opposite: As Democrats overperform in special election after special election and Republican confidence in the midterms craters, he’s trying to set expectations low—way low. After all, he says, the guys in power nearly always lose the midterms. And as once-unimaginable cracks have begun spiderwebbing across the MAGA coalition, he’s making a specific case to his party: “The only person that could bring the nose up and help us win is the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”

Still, it’s remarkably abnormal to see the chair of the institutional Republican party—the head of the party’s campaign apparatus!—openly predict doom for his candidates. It risks further depressing GOP voters and encouraging lawmakers to retire early. And, beyond that, it’s far from clear that the Republicans who actually need to get elected next year share Gruters’s assessment of how to fix their electoral predicament.

This week, I spoke to a number of swing-state GOP operatives about Trump and the midterm environment. And they were pretty blunt. To them, the biggest reason Republicans seem bound for disaster isn’t historical midterm trends. It’s the world the president has built for them to run in—particularly when it comes to affordability. (To encourage them to speak openly, including in ways that contradict top-down GOP messaging, we agreed not to disclose their names.)

“His message sucks. It’s absolute trash. ‘Affordability is a Democrat hoax’??? Give me a break,” said one strategist, a veteran of presidential and congressional campaigns. “It’s the non-college-educated version of the Biden message, and we saw how well that worked. . . . Nobody believes the economy and particularly affordability is getting better.”

World War G: Trump Loses the Indiana Battle

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The passage of Prop 50 in CA will offset the Texas gerrymander.  The D victory in VA will partly offset GOP gerrymanders elsewhere.

Mitch Smith at NYT:

Republican members of the Indiana Senate bucked President Trump on Thursday and joined Democrats in voting down a new congressional map that would have positioned Republicans to sweep the state’s U.S. House seats.

The 19 to 31 vote was a highly public defeat for Mr. Trump, who has spent significant political capital pushing for redrawn maps in Republican-led states and who repeatedly threatened political consequences for Indiana Republicans who did not fall in line. The defiance of Mr. Trump comes as he faces other signs of rifts within his own party.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office after the vote, Mr. Trump downplayed the result in Indiana, saying that “we won every other state.” He also said that he hoped the president pro tem of the Indiana Senate, who voted against the map, loses his next primary.

The rejection of the map in the State Senate, where Republicans hold 40 of the 50 seats, followed months of presidential lobbying that turned increasingly pointed in recent weeks as it became clear that some holdouts were not budging. Mr. Trump had called some of them out by name on social media, openly questioning their loyalty to the party and pledging to back primary challengers against them.

Of Bubbles and Billionaires

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.  

Trump is in a bubble. Billionaires are inside it.

Aaron Schaffer and  Clara Ence Morse at WP:

The world’s richest man. The owner of the Houston Rockets. The former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. These are just some of the 12 billionaires — not including Trump — who have held roles in the Trump administration this year.

In total, they’re worth $390.6 billion as of March. While previous administrations have included the ultrarich, the wealth held by this group is larger than even the first Trump administration, previously the wealthiest in U.S. history.

 Excluding Elon Musk — who poured more than $294 million into contributions boosting Trump and other Republicans in 2024 — the billionaires in the Trump administration, along with their spouses, gave more than $52 million to Trump, pro-Trump PACs and the Republican National Committee in the 2024 campaign alone, according to a Washington Post analysis.

• Elon Musk, Leader, U.S. DOGE Service (resigned in late May)/ Net worth: $342 billion
• Tilman Fertitta. Ambassador to Italy and San Marino. Net worth: $11.3 billion
• Joe Gebbia, Chief design officer. Net worth: $8.3 billion
• Melinda Hildebrand, Ambassador to Costa Rica. Net worth: $7.7 billion/
• Stephen Feinberg,  Deputy secretary, Defense Department. Net worth: $5 billion.
• Warren Stephens, Ambassador to Britain. Net worth: $3.4 billion
• Howard Lutnick, Secretary, Commerce Department Net worth: $3.2 billion
• Linda McMahon, Secretary, Education Department. Net worth: $3 billion
• Antonio Gracias. Volunteer, DOGE (left in July). Net worth: $2.2 billion
• Steve Witkoff,  Assistant to the president and special envoy for peace missions, Net worth: $2 billion
• Kelly Loeffler, Administrator, Small Business Administration. Net worth: $1.3 billion
• Paul Atkins, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission. Net worth: $1.2 billion

At Politico, Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns report on a Pennsylvania speech that illsutrates Trump's cluelessness on economic woes:

...President Donald Trump kicked off his so-called affordability tour in Pennsylvania last night, jump-starting what White House aides say will be a relentless campaign on the economy for the next 11 months. Trump, of course, has just rated the U.S. economy as “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” in his big interview Monday with Playbook’s Dasha Burns, telling Dasha not to be “dramatic” when she pointed out families are buying presents and juggling budgets at this time of year.
...

To be clear: Trump did deliver his lines, mostly. Prices are too high, he said — because Democrats made them high. Making America Affordable Again is, he said, his “highest priority.” He lauded GOP tax cuts and the falling price of gas. He read out a pre-written joke that “Democrats talking about affordability is like Bonnie and Clyde preaching about public safety.” And he unveiled graphs intended to back up his case, showing that prices and interest rates were higher when Joe Biden was president.

But Trump is still Trump — and so he said a lot more. The opening night of this loosely defined tour was a rambling, 97-minute speech that leapt from topic to topic, and lurched from convivial humor about colleagues to rants about foreign migrants. The MAGA crowd lapped it all up, and aides said Trump was “in his element.” But the president offered up all the ammo — and all the social media clips — his critics need.

A few examples:

• Trump veered off message, twice calling affordability a “hoax” — before admitting he’s no longer “allowed” to use the phrase.
• Trump revived his ill-advised line that it’s fine if parents can’t afford so many toys and pencils for their kids now prices are higher due to tariffs. “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter,” he told the crowd. “Two or three is nice.”
• More broadly, Trump made clear his lack of conviction in the whole premise — mocking the word “affordability,” mocking his own price charts, mocking his pre-prepared speech — and admitting he was only on tour at the urging of chief of staff Susie Wiles.
• And Trump strayed way off topic, revealing his team had asked him not to discuss the border — before doing exactly that.
• In one of several long passages on immigration, Trump launched his most vitriolic attack yet on America’s Somali community, describing their homeland as “filthy, dirty, disgusting” and wondering why the U.S. couldn’t take migrants from Scandinavia instead. (The clip’s going viral, and he’s being heavily criticized for this language today.)
• In the same breath, Trump confirmed 2018 reports — denied at the time — that he’d described certain African and Asian nations as “shithole countries.”

Pick Your Opponent, 2025

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried variations of the "pick your opponent" ploy.

Reese Gorman at NOTUS:

Republicans’ Senate campaign arm has actively worked behind the scenes to encourage Rep. Jasmine Crockett to jump into the Senate Democratic primary in Texas, believing she will be the easiest opponent to beat.

Just a month ago, there was grave concern among Republicans about the Senate race, where incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is running for reelection. Democrats were running two formidable candidates, and Cornyn was caught in the middle of a bruising three-way primary that Republicans were concerned would weaken the eventual nominee.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee put out a poll in July with Crockett’s name included, which showed her as the leading Democrat in a hypothetical matchup.

“When we saw the results, we were like, ‘OK, we got to disseminate this far and wide,’” a source familiar with the process told NOTUS.

The fact that Crockett was included in the poll was no accident.

In June news broke that Texas Democrats Colin Allred, James Talarico, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Joaquin Castro met to discuss the 2026 election. Operatives at the NRSC realized that Crockett — whose political stock had been rising — wasn’t included in that meeting and also hadn’t been included in any credible poll. So they decided to change that.

Following the NRSC’s polls, other surveys began to include Crockett and showed similar results: She was surging in the primary.

The NRSC then worked to amplify those polls and is taking credit for helping “orchestrate the pile on of these polling numbers to really drive that news cycle and that narrative that Jasmine Crockett was surging in Texas,” the source said.

Democratic Tea?

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Holly Otterbein and Stephen Neukam at  Axios:

Hours after former NFL star Colin Allred quit the Texas Senate race Monday, rabble-rousing Rep. Jasmine Crockett jumped in — the latest sign that Democrats are facing a Tea Party-style revolt by progressives.

Why it matters: Senate Democratic leaders this year have tried to tip the scales in favor of their favorite 2026 candidates in several states — but they've lost some power as much of the party's base has turned on them in President Trump's second term.

...

Zoom out: In Ohio and North Carolina, Schumer helped clear the 2026 Democratic primary fields for former Sen. Sherrod Brown and former Gov. Roy Cooper. But in several other states, Democratic leaders have failed to head off contested primaries — and party-approved candidates are struggling to stake out leads. It's all unfolding amid an intraparty rebellion that's drawn some comparisons to how the conservative Tea Party movement reshaped the GOP nearly two decades ago.

• In Maine, polls show oyster farmer Graham Platner, a progressive Democrat, as still competitive against Schumer-endorsed Maine Gov. Janet Mills — even after reports Platner made controversial comments online and had a Nazi-linked tattoo (which he's covered up).
• In the Michigan Senate primary, mainstream Democrats have complained that Rep. Haley Stevens, the favorite of party officials, has run a lackluster campaign against liberal state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Bernie-Sanders backed Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor.
• In Iowa, the establishment favorite, Josh Turek, faces a large primary field.

No, Trump is Definitely Not Reagan's Heir

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Pete Hegseth's tenure is one of them.

David McAfee at Raw Story:

Hegseth over the weekend made a simple comment when he said, "If you look at actual policies, Donald Trump is the true and rightful heir of Ronald Reagan."

The statement didn't go over well with critics.

Attorney Danny Miller simply quoted Reagan as saying, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Conservative Heath Mayo chimed in with, "No serious person believes this. Reagan helped *win* the Cold War. He invested in freedom and peace. He knew it mattered, and that it wasn’t a waste or a 'territorial dispute.' And it’s frankly embarrassing that the Reagan Foundation and the 'Reagan National Defense Forum' would give this guy a microphone."

"He’s not worth the time of serious people, despite his title. I would have walked out," Mayo added.

Another conservative analyst, Tom Nichols chimed in with, "Yeah, no."Independent veteran leader Paul Rieckhoff said, "Hegseth is the only person who believes this."

Another conservative analyst, Tom Nichols chimed in with, "Yeah, no."

Independent veteran leader Paul Rieckhoff said, "Hegseth is the only person who believes this."

Reagan supported robust immigration, free trade, and a tough stance on the Kremlin.  Trump's policies are the opposite.

Here is Reagan on the moral stakes of foreign policy: "Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness -- pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world."

Trump's national security strategy: “We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.”

Kremlin spokesman Peskov: Adjustments to the U.S. National Security Strategy largely align with our own vision.

🔗 Source: https://t.co/fkc1rZJ13Q pic.twitter.com/AadbDEHBVw

— Russia Direct (@RussiaDirect_) December 7, 2025

A City on a Pile of Cash

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Ronald Reagan:

Our nation was conceived in liberty, and we have always understood that the fate of our own freedom is tied to the fate of freedom in the world. The flourishing of liberty, democracy, and constitutional government is the goal of this administration as it is the greatest wish of Americans and that Americans have for all peoples of the world. We pray that we'll all come to enjoy what we consider our greatest treasure—freedom.

Anton Troianovski at NYT:

Latin American countries must grant no-bid contracts to U.S. companies. Taiwan’s significance boils down to semiconductors and shipping lanes. Washington’s “hectoring” of the wealthy Gulf monarchies needs to stop.

The world as seen from the White House is a place where America can use its vast powers to make money.

President Trump has shown all year that his second term would make it a priority to squeeze less powerful countries to benefit American companies. But late Thursday, his administration made that profit-driven approach a core element of its official foreign policy, publishing its long-anticipated update to U.S. national security aims around the world.

The document, known as the National Security Strategy, describes a world in which American interests are far narrower than how prior administrations — even in Mr. Trump’s first term — had portrayed them. Gone is the long-familiar picture of the United States as a global force for freedom, replaced by a country that is focused on reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians, instead seeing them as sources of cash.

“We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world,” it says, “without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.”