The GOP's Trump Albatross

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

Aaron Blake at CNN:

In an interview released Friday, Trump denied not caring about the GOP’s fortunes in the midterms. But he didn’t actually dispel the idea that he’s not terribly interested in being a team player and doing the things his party needs.

In the interview with Punchbowl News, taped on Thursday, Jake Sherman asked Trump about the narrative that he doesn’t really care about Congress and holding the GOP’s majorities in 2026.

“It’s not right,” Trump said, adding: “We’re gonna fight hard,” and, “it’s very important to the country that we win.”

But then he said a bunch of other stuff.

The president suggested that he’s doing Republicans a favor both by potentially spending some of his war chest on them — “I could spend it on pretty much anything I want,” Trump said — and by taking time out to occasionally take his message on the road.

“I didn’t have to be away in Nevada yesterday, I didn’t have to be in Los Angeles yesterday making speeches,” Trump said. “I didn’t have to be supporting all the people. I have a busy schedule.”

Trump added that he recently told someone that he had already won his own campaign, so “I’m not campaigning.”

Then came the comment that should really make Republicans pull their hair out: that their problems are of their own making, not his.

“The question is, will [people] vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you,” Trump said, adding: “They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me.”

This is, to put it lightly, not accurate.

Trump has dragged the country into an unpopular war with unpopular economic consequences.  Iran will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.   

Patrick Wintour at The Guardian:

Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis.

For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei where demands for retribution were ubiquitous.

While Iranian officials since the 1979 Islamic revolution have never trusted the US, that animus is now also directed personally towards Trump. He not only tore up the painfully negotiated nuclear deal in 2018, but he sanctioned the assassination of the military leader Qassem Suleimani and twice involved Iran in negotiations on its nuclear programme only to launch wars against it. He shows no remorse for the killing of the country’s supreme leader, or for the attempt on the life of Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Alexander Ward at WSJ:

For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said.

But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things.

This rapid chain of events suggests Trump’s options for walking away from the conflict have again narrowed. Trump has repeatedly threatened—and then backed away from—a massive escalation of its bombing campaign. But the recent chaos in negotiations signaled Tehran is prepared for a long and grinding conflict.

“Iran’s recent hardline demands for reopening the strait make it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group consulting firm, said, “The Iranians fully believe Trump wants out and is focused on opening the strait, which is why they are playing hardball.”

 

Blue Bubbles and Wasted Votes

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

In 2000 and 2016, Democrats won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote.  Not a coincidence.  The GOP has a structural advantage in Senate elections, and not just because of equal representation in the chamber.

Charlie Cook:

Last month, Pew released a study looking at the national political landscape 100 days before the midterm election. President Trump’s approval rating among 3,554 adults interviewed showed 34 percent approving his job in office and 64 percent disapproving. Forty-three percent of the 2,628 registered voters indicated a preference for Democrats for the U.S. House, to 37 percent for Republicans.

The terrific political research team at Pew was kind enough to break out their results, detailing the 1,477 adults (1,039 voters) in 24 red states, the 1,465 adults (1,122 voters) in 19 blue states, and the 606 adults (462 voters) in seven purple states.

Looking at these data, two points jumped off the page. The first was that Republicans were surprisingly weak within their 24 base red states, leading by only 4 points, 39 to 35 percent, and leaving 26 percent up for grabs. Those interviewed in 19 blue states favored Democrats by a whopping 16 points, 50 to 34 percent, with 16 points on the table. The two parties were tied at 42 percent in purple states.

Many would focus on how much stronger Democrats are in blue areas than Republicans are in red areas. But this means that Democrats are “wasting” a lot of support. In effect, they’re running up the score in blue states, where there are few GOP seats to flip, and inflating their national showing. In purple states, where Democrats want an edge in a politically favorable environment, the support levels are even.

That leads to a second and closely related finding. Across several questions, voters in purple states are more closely aligned with red staters than with blue staters.

Republlicans and Muslims

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. For more than a decade now, Trump has appealed to bigotry against Muslims.

Aaron Blake at CNN:

On Tuesday, Republican primary voters in Michigan gave a double-digit victory to a congressional candidate who had dropped out of the race, choosing him over Amir Hassan, a President Donald Trump-backed former Muslim with an identifiably Arabic name.

On Wednesday, some people attending a Trump speech in Las Vegas booed the mention of another Arabic-sounding name before GOP Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo urged them to stop. Austin Abdelnabi was a police officer recently killed in the line of duty, and his brother once worked at the White House.

Either of these episodes could be dismissed as coincidences — as one-offs that say little about much of anything.

But it would seem little coincidence that they happened as Republicans this week launched an overtly Islamophobic campaign against the new Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed.

But some good news from Ben Kasimar at NBC:

Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has lost his Republican primary, NBC News projects, falling to a former state official in a primary season that has seen an unusually high number of incumbents lose renomination.

Charlie Hatcher, the former state agricultural commissioner, rode support from prominent establishment Republicans to a victory over Ogles, a controversial congressman backed by President Donald Trump. He is a heavy favorite in the general election in the deep-red district.

Ogles was outraised and outspent on the airwaves, largely because of a massive ad effort from a pro-clean energy group — a last-minute campaign Ogles criticized in an interview with Fox News.

While Ogles had arguably the most important endorsement in a GOP primary in Trump’s, Hatcher had backing from Gov. Bill Lee, former Gov. Bill Haslam and other prominent Republicans, like former Trump Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.

Ogles has faced various controversies over the years. He said this year that Muslims don’t belong in American society, deleted a homophobic social media post after having blamed a staffer and argued last year that the federal government should revoke future New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship and deport him.

Socialists and Primaries

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The 2026 environment is very favorable for the Democrats, but a hard leftward shift could spoil their chances.

 Aaron Blake and Eric Bradner at CNN:

The progressive effort to remake the Democratic Party triumphed in battleground Michigan on Tuesday, as former public health official Abdul El-Sayed defeated the more moderate Rep. Haley Stevens — and the party’s establishment, which had rallied behind her.

...

It’s difficult to completely isolate the Israel and AIPAC factor. And AIPAC did get a win Tuesday, having spent more than $2 million to help Missouri Rep. Wesley Bell easily fend off democratic socialist former Rep. Cori Bush.

...

A pair of democratic socialists also won key House primaries in Michigan.

Perhaps the biggest one was climate activist William Lawrence’s win in the 7th district. Lawrence prevailed after two more establishment-oriented candidates — former US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink and Navy SEAL veteran Matt Maasdam — split the rest of the vote.

 And this is a battleground general election race. That means the Sanders wing of the party now confronts major proving grounds in both the Senate race and a very important House race.

Lawrence’s campaign was heavily criticized by the Congressional Black Caucus and even House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, after the Huffington Post published Lawrence’s 2024 remarks saying that Black political leaders “defang the White left.”

CNN is also now projecting that democratic socialist state Rep. Donavan McKinney ousted Rep. Shri Thanedar in the Detroit-based 13th district.

The result might have been less about policies than racial representation — the majority-Black city had recently been without a Black representative for the first time since the 1950s — but it’s still a win for DSA.

 

The Economist on the DSA

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The 2026 environment is very favorable for the Democrats, but a hard leftward shift could spoil their chances.

The Economist on the DSA:

Their number has swelled more than twentyfold in the past decade, but still totals only around 120,000. The prime target is the downwardly mobile millennial. Michael Lange, a political analyst and DSA member, says the question to identify prospective joiners is: “Are you under 50 and do you rent?” At its latest survey, in 2021, four-fifths of DSA members over the age of 25 had a college degree—twice the share of American adults. A third had a postgraduate degree and a third were gay or queer. Ashik Siddique, a co-chair of the DSA, says it is the largest queer membership organisation in the country. Members found to be working as cops can be expelled.

Therein lies the paradox: a group that claims to represent the working class looks and speaks nothing like it. On all manner of social issues, from trans rights to policing to immigration to abortion, college graduates are far to the left of blue-collar workers. Take protections for trans people, a plank of the DSA platform. Only half of working-class people tell pollsters that it should be illegal to fire or evict a trans person, compared with 82% of left-leaning college grads.

On economics, too, working-class and older voters tend to be more sceptical of the sweeping changes promised by the young new left, says Adam Carlson, a pollster. Mr Siddique, sounding a bit like Lenin, says the DSA’s task is to cultivate a working-class consciousness. The wrinkle is that working-class voters believe strongly in merit and hard work, notes Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist at Colby College. They tend to be less enthusiastic about expanding government services while distrusting pointy-headed types who use words like “systemic”. Tellingly, in polling, only white left-leaning college grads count “tax the rich” as a top-ten priority.

Socialism as a Liability

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The 2026 environment is very favorable for the Democrats, but a hard leftward shift could spoil their chances.

Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released last Thursday illustrated the problems posed by the rise of the D.S.A.

A solid 75 percent of Democratic voters said they would consider voting for “a candidate for president who identifies as a democratic socialist.” Among all registered voters, however, a majority (54-42) said that they would not consider supporting a democratic socialist presidential candidate, driven by Republicans (88 percent no, 10 percent yes) and independents and other voters (54 to 36).

Even more decisive were the responses when the Post-Ipsos poll asked, “How much do you like or dislike political leaders who identify as democratic socialists?” A third (33 percent) of Democrats said they like democratic socialist political leaders and 10 percent said they dislike them. Among all voters, in contrast, 42 percent said they disliked democratic socialist political leaders and 17 percent said they liked such politicians — Republicans 70 dislike to 3 like and independents and other voters 30 to 12.

In other words, when it comes to socialism, Democratic voters are the outliers, in opposition to the views of voters overall and especially to the views of independents and Republicans.

In terms of actual politics, the outlier status of democratic socialism reflects the concentration of socialist candidates’ success in deep-blue urban areas where Republicans have little or no chance of winning. At the same time, Republicans are relishing the prospect of capitalizing on voters’ distrust of socialism in purple districts and states, even going so far as to financially support the further-left candidate in Democratic primaries.

...

Michael Kistner, a political scientist at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service and an author of research on these issues with Canes-Wrone, wrote that his view “is that the increasing prominence of D.S.A. and Justice Democrats likely hurts Democratic candidates’ standing with moderate and independent voters on the margin. The reason is not performance in these candidates’ own races, should they win the nomination. Typically these candidates win in solidly Democratic districts. The more salient concern is how these candidates affect the party brand of Democrats nationally.”

There is “good evidence,” Kistner argued, “that party brands — the general reputation and perceived positioning of the party, as seen by the general public — are real and affect election outcomes.”

...

In perhaps the sharpest critique of D.S.A. and other groups on the Democratic left, Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist think tank the Third Way, wrote by email responding to my query: “Since 2018, the moderate New Democrat Coalition Action Fund has managed to flip 50 House seats from red to blue. The D.S.A., Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and the Sunrise Movement can claim zero red-to-blue flipped seats in that time.”

 

 

Trump and Money Laundering

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Trump is abusing his power to enlarge his political empire.

William Marx at NPR:

Capital One bank has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit from the Trump Organization over the closure of hundreds of bank accounts back in 2021, arguing in new papers that the shutdowns were the product of a monthslong anti-money-laundering review — not retaliation for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as the Trump family businesses have claimed.

In a motion to dismiss the case filed Friday in a Florida federal court, Capital One's lawyers wrote that the bank's own filings and the Trump businesses' allegations "make clear that Capital One closed Plaintiffs' accounts for anti-money laundering ('AML') reasons."

The bank said the decision followed "months of analysis and a careful review" by its financial-crimes team, which it said was staffed by employees with "decades of law enforcement experience." But the filings suggest the Trump Organization and affiliated entities were given no opportunity to address any money-laundering or compliance concerns before the accounts' closures.

It's unclear if subsequent banks for the Trump Organization have ever raised money laundering concerns, or what steps the organization took in response to Capital One's allegations. The Trump Organization didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The fight is one of several lawsuits Trump-aligned entities have brought against major banks since Trump returned to the White House.