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Trump’s Polls Are Collapsing. Is a Blue Tsunami Coming? (w/ Ron Brownstein) | Bulwark on Sunday
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Bill Kristol
Hi, Bill Kristol here. Welcome to Bull Work on Sunday. I'm very pleased to be joined today by the person I regard as our nation's preeminent election analyst and a long time, long friend and excellent journalist beyond elections, on pop culture and music. Baseball. We were just discussing baseball before we went on the air, but we'll spare you that discussion. Ron's exultant is a Dodger fan over last night's trade, but I'm not going to get into that. And we'll talk about the polls and above all, the November election, which is hard to believe. What is it?
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Ron Klain
Three.
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Bill Kristol
Three months away? Almost exactly.
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Bus Driver
Right?
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Ron Klain
Yeah.
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Commercial Narrator
Yeah.
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Ron Klain
Wow.
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Bill Kristol
So, Ron, thank you for joining me.
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Ron Klain
Yeah.
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Bill Kristol
So lots to talk about. Let's go. Let's begin with the polls. I mean, pretty striking this past week, I think. I've got CNN, Trump's approval below 35 and four respectable polls, I think, right. CNN, AP, Quipac, and Pew. Pew is maybe a couple of weeks, a week earlier, I think a couple weeks earlier in the field because the others were pretty much a week ago. And I think a couple of those were registered voters, not even adults, which Trump's been doing a little better with typically. So probably that. I mean, pollsters correctly say if you look at the president's approval, you want to see what the whole country thinks of him. So it should be all adults. But when you're getting close to it off your election, you want to look at registered voters, presumably, you know, anyway, so he there he is below 35, which is a striking drop, isn't it, from where he was even a few months ago? So what does it mean? What does it mean for the midterms?
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Ron Klain
Well, as we talked about before, the president's approval rating, the approval rating of a sitting president has become the single most important factor in shaping midterms. And there are a lot of things that are going on, different cross currents, who Democrats are nominating, what the map looks like. But I would argue that these kinds of polls and what we're seeing in polling in both House and Senate races to me, has already coalesced the core question of 2026. And the core question of 2026 in my mind is can Republicans win significantly more voters who disapprove of Trump than they did during his first term? That is the central question in this election. As I said, a lot of things go into that, including what's happening with Democrats. But, you know, if you look at Trump's approval rating now, it is significantly lower. We're talking 10 points lower than Bill Clinton in 94, Barack Obama in 2010, Trump himself in 18, Biden in 22, and about 6 or 7 points lower than George W. Bush in 2006. And those were all elections where the president's party lost the House. And with the exception of Biden in 22, elections where the president's party did really poorly in the Senate. I mean, you know, his approval rating is now at the level that typically has produced really bad outcomes for the president's party. And so, you know, the reason Republicans are remaining relatively calm about this election and are not yet kind of in that 1929 standing on the ledge, you know, of the, of the high building is because Democrats are not winning in these polls nearly as many people who disapprove of Trump as they did during their first term. We can talk about the details of that in a minute. And to me, that is the core question, like, can Republicans in fact, hold many more voters who disapprove of Trump than they did in 2018 and 2020? Because it's pretty clear that is what they are going to have to do to prevent a really good night for Democrats.
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Bill Kristol
So say a word more about that and about I've been struck by this. The strongly disapprove of Trump is around 50%.
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Ron Klain
Yes.
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Bill Kristol
And that presumably are overwhelmingly going to vote against the Republican candidate when the Republican Party. My only footnote to what you said is especially true, obviously, when the party of the president controls Congress. So it becomes fully A referendum on do you want to.
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Ron Klain
Yeah.
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Bill Kristol
And a party that's been so supportive of the president, so fully a referendum on do you want Trump to have a compliant Congress for the next two years or a check and balance Congress for the next two years. That's the major issue, presumably in this election. Democrats aren't going to govern the country for the next two years if they win.
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Ron Klain
Right.
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Bill Kristol
But Trump will if the Republicans win anyway. So. And the stronger disapprovals around 50, the strong approvals, what, low 20s, kind of
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Ron Klain
low 20s, which is a turnout marker as well, historically.
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Bill Kristol
So then, yeah, Republicans need to win a lot of those somewhat disapprovers of Trump. They need to come back to the Republican fold and tell themselves, and many seem to be in the polls, as you say, and it makes sense that they're not such MAGA Republicans, but they still prefer a Republican Congress for various traditional Republican reasons. So what does the polling tell us about this, and what's your sort of educated guess as to how that moves over the next three months?
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Ron Klain
So, in Trump's first term, in the exit poll in 2018, 90% of people who disapproved of Trump voted Democratic for the house. In 2020, 93% of people who disapproved of Trump voted Democratic for the House. Over all of the elections, over all of the Senate elections in 18 and 20, for which we have exit polls, every Democratic Senate candidate, incumbent or challenger, one, at least 89% of people who disapproved of Trump, except Sarah Gideon, against Susan Collins in 2020 in Maine. Susan Collins in Maine in 2020, was the only Republican Senate incumbent or challenger who won more than 8% of people who disapproved of Trump, according to the exit polls. And then in 2025, we saw the same thing. I mean, Cheryl in New Jersey, Spanberger in Virginia, they won, I think, roughly 93% each of voters who disapproved of Trump. Even Jay Jones. Right. That Attorney General candidate who, you know, had some political baggage in terms of texting about, you know, killing political rivals. He won 89% of people who disapproved of Trump. Okay, so that's kind of like the baseline that we're operating at. And, and, you know, those numbers, the correlation, and, you know, by the way, the other side is true, too. I mean, 90% plus of people who approve of Trump vote Republican in all of these races. And the, the numbers for Trump in terms of the number of disapprovers who voted for the other party is a little bit higher than for Most other presidents in this period for the reason that you cited such a high percentage of Trump disapprovers strongly disapprove. And the strong disapprovers historically have behaved very differently than the somewhat disapprovers. I mean, you know, generally the out party, the party that isn't the president, the other party, the opposition party, wins most of the somewhat disapprovers. But among the strong disapprovers, it's been like 95% usually. I mean, even Biden in 2022, who did pretty well among the Democrats, did okay. Among the somewhat disapproving of Biden, 95% of the people who strongly disapproved of Biden still voted Republican. Now, you know, so part of the challenge Republicans have had in the Trump era is that there are not a lot of somewhat disapproval disapprovers. And if you look at the polling carefully now, Bill, not only are Republicans running unusually well among the somewhat disapprovers, but Democrats are not up to 95% among the strong disapprovers yet. So you have to ask yourself, okay, are there reasons why all the way through Election Day this will endure and Republicans will run significantly better among people who disagree with Trump than they did in the first term, or is this kind of like a mirage? I asked whether it's a seasonal problem or a structural problem. Right. So let's go through it and I'd be interested in your thoughts as well. Okay. So why would Republican Senate and House candidates run better among significantly better, 10 points better among people who disapprove of Trump than they did his first term? Well, one reason would be you cited more of those disapprovers are Republicans. 20% of Republicans now disapprove of Trump. So some of them are still going to vote Republican. So it's reasonable to assume that Democrats may not get quite to 90, 93%. I mean, that could tick down a little, but it's not ticking down a little. It's dropping a lot. Second reason, Democratic Party image is weaker than it was in 2018. Right. I mean, you had the Biden presidency in the middle in 2018. In the exit poll, people split evenly on whether they had a favorable or unfavorable view of the Democratic Party. That's not the case now. It's net negative by 15 to 20 points. And yes, some of that is Democrats who are angry at their own leaders, as I'm seeing here in Michigan, but it also includes independents, so that might suppress it. And then finally, third big reason it might be different is the map. This election is being fought out primarily on Republican terrain. I mean, in 2018, there were still two dozen Republicans in districts that voted for Hillary Clinton. And Democrats, kind of, that was the core. That was half of their games. They beat 21 of them. I think of the 24, you know, before redistricting, there were only three House Republicans in districts that Clinton won. So Democrats have to go deeper into Trump country to win their House seats this time. And the same thing in the Senate. I mean, you know, most of the, all of the states except Maine that Democrats are targeting this year voted for Trump in 2024, most of them by double digits. So all of those reasons you could say, okay, Democrats may not get quite as high among Trump disapprovers as they did in 18 and 20, but are they really only going to win 80% of them, which is what they're getting now? Low 80s and polls? I personally do not think so. I mean, I think that, like Bogart, I believe the fundamental things apply and that over time the get wonky here, the generic ballot will bend toward presidential approval, not the other way around. Like, I mean, you know, Democrats in the generic ballot now are usually winning around somewhere between, I mean, CNN still had them at 70% among Trump disapprovers, and they're in that poll that had Trump, whatever it was, 34%. And you know, most polls have them somewhere between high 70s, low 80s. I don't think it's going to be that low. I think in the end, a reasonable share of those Republican leaning voters who say they disapprove of Trump but are now voting Republican for House and Senate and thus keeping down the Democratic number among the Trump disapprovers, I think a reasonable share of them are not going to show up and that's going to move the overall number back up. One last. I know we're going to talk about the Senate, but just to kind of put the frame on the Senate, you know, I mentioned that Collins was the only Republican who won more than 8% of Trump disapprovers in his first term. She is also the only Republican Senate incumbent or challenger who won in a state where the exit poll showed that more people disapproved than approved of his job performance. She was the only one. You know, you look at those New York Times Sienna polls from a couple weeks ago, Republicans were winning in Ohio and Iowa and tied in Texas, even though Trump was only at 44% approval in each state. Okay, is that, like, you know, my instinct is that if he's really at 44% on election day and he might recover a little, but if he is that low, that it would be shocking if they won any, much less. It wouldn't be shocking if they won any. It would be shocking if they won all of those races. Because, again, Republicans in polling today are routinely doing something that only Susan Collins did in his entire first term. And I just don't know if that's sustainable. I tend to think it's more, like I said, a seasonal problem. Democrats aren't defined. The individual candidates aren't that defined. Yet people are reacting to their overall view of the party, which is more negative than in Trump's first term because of the Biden presidency. But I think it's gonna be very hard for half a dozen Senate Republicans to hold their Democratic opponents to only 80 to 85% of people who disapprove of Trump after only one held them to less than 89 over his entire first term.
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Bill Kristol
Oh, that's really interesting. I want to get to the Senate raises really state by state. But let's just one more on the generic ballot in the House. I take it if right now it's 6ish, 7ish most of these polls, the Democratic edge. I assume that if the Democrats are at 7 or 8 in the generic, they win the House. I mean, despite redistricting. Yeah, right.
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Ron Klain
Yeah. I mean, you know, even with, like I said, even before redistricting, there were fewer obvious targets than there were in 2018. I mean, obviously Democrats started lower than what were they, 199, I think, or 200ish. So they don't have as many targets. And then redistricting has Further narrowed the playing field for them. But, you know, Trump's approval now is what I mean, like, literally in these last polls, it's 15 points below his vote now. I don't know. I don't think it's going to stay that. I don't think in the exit poll, if I was just, if in the exit poll, 34% of people disapprove of Trump 15 points below his vote, there are going to be a lot of Republicans who do not expect to lose or wake up, you know, looking for new employment. But even if his approval comes in somewhere like 41, okay, that's eight points below his vote, right? I mean, that's eight, that's an eight point. So if you have a fairly uniform swing, which may or may not, we should. Because I want to mention one other thing. You know, you're talking places where he, where he won north of 55%, that would be in play now, as I've written, and with help from Kyle Condike at Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, you know, even in really good midterm years, 06, 10, 14, 18 and 22, the opposition party have won very few seats where the President got at least 55% two years earlier. But there are enough seats between up to 55 for Democrats to win the House. And as I say, if Trump stays this low, there are going to be people in 55% Trump, 24 districts that lose. You know, unless this is something completely different than we've seen before, which in
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Bill Kristol
the era of Trump is, we shouldn't rule out 100%. But I tend to think I'm sort of with you. I, I just gave a talk the other day and I, I, my whole theme was, we're in a new era. It's not going to be like anything we knew growing up. Who knows what 2028 looks like within each party, between the parties, 30, 20, 30, can't even think about, you know, it's a whole new world to Trump. Say nothing of free and fair elections. We said that. I, then someone said, what about 2026? I said there I have a fairly conventional, traditional view, which feel like, absent a little bit, the election interference question. It feels now like a pretty normal midterm in the sense that it's a midterm that you have when a party has controlled the presidency and Congress and has had pretty uniform voting in Congress for the president and it just becomes a referendum on the president. One questioner asked, well, isn't that a little simple? Shouldn't the Voters be judging each candidate. And I actually, they don't defend the vote as much. I mean, the most important thing for the next two years, and I'm saying this analytically, obviously I'm anti Trump, but I mean, is, do you have a Congress that goes along with Trump or the Jackson? That just is factually the most important thing. The Democrats aren't going to pass some radical overhaul of health care. They couldn't even get the votes in their own conference to do it, let alone, you know, get Trump to sign it. So the most important thing, I think, is the Trump question. And that's where I think your argument. There's a sense that the reversion will be to the Trump number, not to the current generic number. Makes a certain amount of sense to me. It just got to be, well, it doesn't have to be, but it could be the case in August, September, October. But more and more voters focus on the question of, well, what do we want for the next two years?
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Ron Klain
You know, so Dan Cena, who ran the DCCC in 2018, said to me that in their polling at this point in the summer, they saw something, they saw something similar where Democrats were having trouble consolidating the voters down on Trump. But he said that in the end, in the districts that were fought out, the districts that were targeted, he believed, he recalls, that virtually no Republican House member or candidate ran above Trump's approval rating in the district in the end, that it was a ceiling, that it was a hard ceiling. So we'll see, you know, because I am sure, you know, Trump's at 35. He's underwater in a lot of places. Now, here's the other thing to kind of keep in mind. And I have to think if I know the answer to this question that I'm posing, but in 2018, you know, Democrats, 2018 was the bookend of 2010. 2010, Republicans swept away these last rural Democrats representing blue collar districts that had been holding on even though those places had been voting Republican at the presidential level since the 80s. Right. It was just kind of the culling. The floorboards had been rotting for years. And then with the weight of the Affordable Care act and everything else, you know, all these guys, John Tanner and Rick Boucher and all these guys fell through the floor. 2018 was the bookend to that, where you had all of these suburban Republicans representing white collar districts who have been hanging on even though those places have been voting Democratic really since Clinton. And they were swept away. Three quarters of the Democrats won, 3/4 of the seats the Democrats won in 2018 had had more white college graduates than the national average. So the result of that is there aren't that many places of the many places like that left to target. I mean, there's Don Bacon's seat, there's Mike Lawler, there's Brian Fitzpatrick, there's Tom Kane Jr. That's about it. Like maybe a couple more here or there. So this time, two thirds of the seats the Democrats are formally targeting have fewer white college graduates or more non college whites than the national average. And so, you know, even though Trump's approval has fallen among them too, it is significantly higher than it is among other groups. I mean, you know, in national polling he is, you know, he won, he's won almost 2/3 of non college whites. He G3 elections. He's now down to around 50, 50among them in national polling. Okay, that's much worse than his vote. And it's a significant, it's like everything else, like a 15 point fall, but it's still 50, 50. It's not 40, 60 like it is among college whites or 25, 75 like it is among the working class minority voters that everybody focused on so much in 24. So you know, if you're talking about northeast Pennsylvania or the seats that Democrats are targeting in Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin, you know Trump's going to be a lot closer to 50 in those districts than he is in Tom Kane's seat where he's probably at 35 right now. So that is just another factor. And the same thing is true in the Senate. Most of the states that are in the mix have more non white, more white, non college graduate, non college whites than the national average.
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Bill Kristol
And I suppose just to conclude this section of our discussion, we'll get to the Senate race. I suppose there is an argument that the non college whites, it wouldn't be crazy to say they will revert, they will become less anti that there, the anti Trump number might move back a little bit up as opposed to what we were saying that the, that the generic was the towards the other way. You know what I mean?
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Ron Klain
I think so. I do. And look, those are voters, those voters have the most, they're the most other weapons that Republicans can use to hold them or you know, magnets to hold them. Even though they're unhappy with Trump, even though they're unhappy with the economy. I will say the risk to Republicans is twofold. I think there one is that a lot of them don't show up. I mean that's entirely a possibility. That they don't show up. But the other one is that it's just worth noting that in 2018, which was an election really where healthcare figured highly prominently, Democrats ran a few point notably like four or five points better among the non college white women than they did in any election before since. And I do think the Medicaid, ACA nexus of issues could allow them to peak into the 40s among those non college white women and that will make a difference in some of these blue collar House districts and Senate races that they have to win.
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Bill Kristol
This has been terribly, really helpful and informed. Okay, Senators, I guess let's maybe do it in two buckets, if that makes sense. I feel like there, there's the. Yeah, the Democrats were at some risk, are at some risk, I suppose, of losing a couple of seats. They hold Michigan and Georgia and they have been favored mostly, I'd say, to pick up two seats they don't hold North Carolina and maybe Maine, so that they start at 47. If they hold and pick up 49. If they don't hold one and only pick up one, they're back at 47 and they have to sweep more of the tougher states that Trump, I think in every case is won by at least 10 points.
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Commercial Disclaimer Voice
Maybe.
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Bill Kristol
Yeah, yeah, we'll get to them in a second. The Iowa, Alaska, Texas, Ohio and then beyond that, Kansas, et cetera type places. So let's begin with the. Am I right? First of all, sorry, I haven't really. North Carolina and Maine or whatever order you want to go.
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Ron Klain
Yeah. So like, I think we've talked about this before, but you know, the key fact about Senate races is that they are correlating much more with the outcome of presidential voting in that state than during our. You know, when we first started in politics, you worked in the Reagan administration. Hard to believe we're remembering this. You know, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. bush won 38 states in all three elections of the 1980s. Okay. And at the end of that, in January 1989, Democrats still had a majority of the Senate seats in those 38 states. I think there were like 11 states where they had both of the Senate seats. They voted three times for Reagan and Bush. Okay. Trump has won 25 states three straight times. Okay. That's the most anybody has won since Reagan and bush in the 80s over three elections. At the end of that, as of January 25th, you know how many seats Democrats held in those 25 states? I mean, Senate seats, zero. It was 50 to zero. Now Democrats are nearly as dominant in the states that have voted three times against Trump, but there are only 19 of them. Democrats have 37 of the 38 in the 19 states that have voted three times against Trump. The only exception is Susan Collins. And then you have the six states that have flipped at any point in the Trump presidency, which is Georgia, Arizona, Nevada through the Sun Belt, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin through the Rust Belt. Democrats now have 10 of their 12 seats, which is why they're competitive. But I would argue is probably not a sustainable number in places that are inherently swing to dominate the Senate that way. So if you think about it, I think about it in these three buckets, right? The Trump states three times Trump states, the three times anti Trump states and then the swing states. So to your now we can get back to your framework. The both of the seats that Democrats really have to defend this year are in those in that handful of states that have flipped at any time during the Trump presidency. They have to hold Michigan, where I am now, and they have to hold Georgia. Okay, Georgia looks solid. Jon Ossoff is almost certainly going to win that race and might be propelled into consideration as a presidential candidate immediately thereafter. If Warnock isn't Michigan we should talk about could get a lot dicier right then to get to a Democrat. But that's just holding serve as you said, to get to a Senate majority, Democrats have to I think the first step clearly is to consolidate the last seat they don't hold in the 19 states that have voted three times against Trump. And that means beating Susan Collins in Maine. And I would bet today that, you know, Susan Collins, as I said, was, you know, held Sarah Gideon to only around 73% of voters who disapproved of Trump. In the UNH poll that came out already in Maine, Troy Jackson was winning 85% of Trump disapprovers. That's all he has to do. If he wins 85% of Trump disapprovers, he's going to be the senator I would bet on. I think he is going to be
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Commercial Narrator
able to do that.
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Ron Klain
I think her, her kind of string has run out both because of Kavanaugh and also because Trump is just more untethered, unhinged, unbounded in the second term. It's just harder to kind of look at her as a, you know, a voter. Her superpower has been that she's been able to get older white women who disapprove of Trump to vote for her anyway. I just think it's harder for them to get there. But even if you do that even if you hold, you know, your two vulnerable seats in the swing swing states, you consolidate the last Republican holdout in the 19, you, by definition, you have to break back into the, what I call the Trump 25. Right. I mean, because if you're ceding 50 Senate seats at the start, right. It doesn't leave you a lot of margin for error. You got to win everything else and the White House to have the majority. So, okay, so if you look at the states that Trump won three times, where do Democrats have a shot? Well, their best shot is clearly North Carolina, which was the closest of those. And I think Roy Cooper is going to win that race. And I think there's much question about that. Again, even there, Trump's disapproval in recent polling has been as high as 60%. Right. And Cooper is in the 80s among them. It's like really all you have to do, it's like, you don't have to be Superman in these places now. Okay, so Maine, North Carolina, you still need two more out of the remaining states. And all the remaining states are in the Trump 25. So what are they? They're probably in order.
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Bill Kristol
One question. All the remaining states are Trump plus
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Ron Klain
double digits, I think. Yeah, 10 in 2020, I think. Yeah, I think.
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Wayfair Narrator
So.
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Ron Klain
You know, you've got, depending on how you want to rank them, Ohio, Alaska, Texas and Iowa. And then the more longer shot things of independent candidates in Nebraska and Montana. And you know that. So you know what, again, okay, is Trump, where is Trump going to be on election Day in Ohio, Alaska, Texas and Iowa? Is he going to be if he's over 50? I have a hard time seeing Democrats winning any of those states, except for maybe Alaska. Peltola might be able to win with Trump over 50, and maybe Sherrod Brown could win a trumpet like 51. But the real question is if he's at like 47, 48 in those states, can Democrats win two of them? Now, if they don't win Michigan, they got to win three of them to have the Senate majority. You know, and I think that Trump, Trump has declined enough that it's wrong to say that either El Sayed or Haley Stevens can't win in November. But I think it's fair to say that it's a lot more complicated and risky for El Sayed. I mean, not, you know, again, like the difference between Biden winning Michigan and Harris and Hillary losing it and this tiny shift among non college white voters. And even in 24among black voters. I was at a, I was at a church Yesterday in inner city Detroit meeting of the National Action Network where the minister who was the president of the Michigan Chapter, you know, he said, he called, he called El Sayed, a one hit wonder who was more concerned about Gaza than Detroit and said, said to me after he thought there was no way, like, like he said zero chance that he will generate the black turnout he needs if he's the nominee. Now, you know, you got a governor's race that might bring people out but you know, and he could win. I mean I, I could see a scenario where he could win if he's the nominee. But if he doesn't win, if they nominate him, which seems like they're poised to do, and he doesn't win, you got to win three states. Trump won by double digits two years ago and that's not easy. I mean I haven't had time to do this but you know, someone like Kyle Conduct or David Wasserman could tell us. I don't think there are a lot of examples of Senate races going the other way in a state that a president won by double digits two years before. I mean there's some, I'm sure there's some. The 06 would be a good example. But you know, and there's more partisan era where presidential voting is a better predictor of how states vote in the Senate as well. I mean it can be done and I think, you know, it really has to. If Democrats don't win in these places this year, when are they going to win them?
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Commercial Disclaimer Voice
Right.
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Ron Klain
If you don't win Ohio, you don't win Iowa, you don't win Alaska or Texas, when are you going to win it?
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Bill Kristol
And I suppose I'm just doing the math in my head. So these states, let's just say these states are plus 11 and a half. Trump just to be easy. And Trump is plus one and a half on election day in 24. So let's assume they're 10 points more Republican than the national average. So if Trump is at, is at 35 there. Trump is right now in theory, the generic Republican Senate candidate is at 45, let's say.
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Commercial Disclaimer Voice
Yes.
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Bill Kristol
And what you're. And what you're. So it does tell me that if Trump ticks back up more vote on election day is more like high 30s. Then the Senate candidates may be at 48. Then it gets very, very.
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Ron Klain
And right. And he will be higher in these states. He will be higher in these states too. Right? I mean he'll be higher in Ohio and Texas.
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Bill Kristol
A good point.
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Commercial Narrator
Yeah.
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Bill Kristol
So I'm well, no, but still. But I think. Yeah, right, right, right.
- [31:21]
Ron Klain
You, I think you are, I think you are positing the most likely scenario that Trump on election day is somewhere around 40 nationally, give or take a point. Couple points. He is in the high 40s in these states and someone's going to win them very narrowly, you know. Now you know again, like what Are there any of these Republicans who can win a, who are positioned by dint of their own identity and the way they've oriented for Trump to win, to show independence to voters who don't like Trump? I don't think so. I mean like Dan Sullivan, John Eusted, Ken Paxton, I mean, I don't see there's no intrinsic reason for them. Now the whole thing will be can they get generally right of center voters to view the Democrat as an unacceptable alternative even if they can't really make a positive case. And look, I think Republicans are basically going to argue that you may not be happy with the way things are going, but you want to go back to Biden. The border inflation, although inflation now is as bad, is it worse than it was in some way? Depending on the month and at the end of the Biden presidency. But clearly the argument will be in. And again we're fighting this election mostly in Republican terrain, like in Republican House districts and Republican leaning red states. So you know there is gonna be some receptivity to the argument of like, yeah, well, you may be disappointed in what you're getting, but do you really wanna give power to the other side now? Is that enough to overcome the level of discontent that is really. Again, as I said, his approval rating is 10 point worse than Barack Obama in 2010 or Bill Clinton in or his own in 2018. You know what, Carter wasn't even this bad in 1978. So we're talking Reagan wasn't this bad in 82. We're talking historically low numbers. And Johnson in 66 wasn't this bad.
- [33:34]
Bill Kristol
I mean, I suppose when you get to the margins, which will be, let's assume they might be close in the oldest states. Feels to me like the Republicans. Democrats have a pretty good draw in terms of the candidates. And Peltola has won statewide in Alaska in a congressional race. Texas, we don't know. Talarico's untested, you might say. But on the other hand, Paxton, it's hard to believe Paxton is as good as a generic Republican would be baggage. Iowa, the Democrats have a strong candidate, it seems like. And Ohio, Sherrod Brown has won. So they're Kind of maybe a little bit. You know, if it were on the bubble, you might think they get a point out of those matchups in those states. Your hostead's unknown, basically. And yeah, Iowa, same. And so I don't know, maybe that helps some. Yeah. I would ask you, since you're in Michigan, one asking Michigan, but I want to say first, I, I'm telling myself there'll be surprises both ways. The Democrats will lose some state they're not supposed to lose, maybe to Michigan, actually. And then they could win one of the either the independent candidate states, which I guess are Montana and Nebraska, Idaho actually. The Democrats seem to have stepped aside for an independent. That's obviously a reach. Then there's Florida, which of course has become so Republican, but you and I are old enough to remember what it wasn't. And of course, in 2018, the Republican senator candidate won by 1 point there against a flawed Democrat, I think. And then Kansas, I don't know. We have that primary on Tuesday. I'm kind of curious about that. Marshall's really unpopular. It seems like an undistinguished one termer. And the farm. And then you get to particular issues. Does the farm economy particularly help Dems in a couple of these upper Midwestern states? Is there particular other issues that help Republicans? Obviously cultural war issues and so forth. So I don't know, just curious about all that. And then give me your sense on Michigan and I'll let you go. Okay.
- [35:18]
Ron Klain
Well, before Michigan, I just, I'm haunted by this experience of. I was on Meet the Press the Sunday before the election of 2002. I can't remember who I was on with. And we were going through the Senate races one by one, you know, and they were all close. And we were like, you know, the Republican looks pretty good in Georgia and the Democrat, I remember thinking the Democrat looked pretty good in Colorado. And we gave, you know, we gave our differing analysis of like, why one would go one way, the other the other way. And then in the end they all went narrowly to the Republicans, which is not unusual in a midterm. You know, a wave election is rarely a tsunami like margins. It's like all the close races break the same way. There's like a little swell in the current. It's not like this giant, you know, killer wave. It's just like a little swell in the current, usually from differential turnout. Right. You know, one side comes out a little more than the other and they tip the same way. So like, while I am, you know, tempted to and, and, and and there are logical reasons for why Democrats might be able to win Alaska but not Iowa, having to do with the share of the vote that are non college whites and the share of the votes that are evangelical Christians. And you know, the states line up in a particular, particular order and they usually behave themselves and don't jump the line even with good candidates. Um, but you know, I just, I just had that 2002, 94, 2010, like, you know, when, the way, when, when it, when it gets big enough, like just everything kind of falls.
- [37:01]
Bill Kristol
Yeah.
- [37:02]
Ron Klain
So Michigan is really interesting. I mean, I think Michigan is, you know, most polls have Abdullah Sayed ahead of Haley Stevens. And you know, we don't have a really high quality public poll, but what we have, this kind of mishmash of polls we have, they're very consistent. They all have like pretty much the same story and they have the electorate dividing in the same way that we've seen in other races with the very left candidates, which is interesting because all the Bernie style candidates present themselves as working class heroes and economic populace. And yet as in other races, I mean, El Sayed is counting, is doing best with college educated white voters and young people. And Stevens the House member is doing best with kind of the old Democratic coalition of working class white seniors and black voters. You know, what I once called the wine track and the beer track in Democratic presidential. It's a classic thing. I think that the big takeaway for me from this is just how discredited, how alienated Democratic voters are from their own leaders. I mean, the failure, the last, the dispiriting disintegration of the Biden presidency, the failure to stop Trump from winning again, the failure to put up a more effective resistance, especially in the first months, although they've done better I think lately of his presidency. I mean, that is just discredited. The broad establishment warning that El Said will have a much harder time winning in a general than Stevens. And a lot of voters are like, really? You're telling us what's electable after 2024? I mean, the dilemma for Democrats is that in this case the establishment is probably right. Not that he can't win. I just want to make that very clear. In this environment, anybody can win Michigan, certainly. But will it be more complicated for him? Sure. You know, I mean, I think, no question, you know, and he's, he's an unusual candidate. He's very talented, but he's a sore winner. Like, you know, he has been openly contemptuous of Stevens. I mean, just like even in an Interview. I mean with all these polls coming out within 15 points ahead, you'd be kind of looking past, you know, looking past and thinking about, okay, how to bring the party together. He was on a podcast this week saying that AIPAC looked around the country and found literally the least capable candidate anywhere. You know, so, you know, and as I say black voters, I mean there's tensions between the black and Arab community. I mean, you know, there's some of that, but there's also this sense that like he is, as the minister said, view him as a one hit wonder who is more worried about Palestine than about Detroit. So you know, he has, if he is the nominee, he has a lot of work to do. If she is the nominee, you know, the issue of young people turnout is going to be problematic I think for her, but less, maybe less important in the midterm than in a, in a presidential because not that many of them vote, you know, anyway. So, you know, Mike Rogers almost beat Alyssa Slotkin. Now that was in a presidential year turnout when, when you know, the non college whites were real. By the way, worth mentioning that in every midterm election the electorate is about 3 to 4 points more college educated than in the previous presidential. Like that's a very consistent pattern. So like if you're asking like how do Democrats, you know, win races in Ohio and Iowa and Texas by a point instead of losing them by a point, that could be one reason. Like you know, if you compare. So what I'm saying is if you compare 2010 to 2008 or you compare 2018 to 2016 or 2022 to 2020, each time college educated voters about 3 to 4 points more of the electorate than they were in the presidential. And so that's that, that will matter. And he, and he's strong with that. But I do think that, you know, this, this will not be a gimme if it's, if it's Stevens, I think it's pretty straightforward. She just rides the zeitgeist. She beats him by four points, three and a half points. If it's El Sayed, it could go either way.
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Ron Klain
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- [41:51]
Bill Kristol
Interesting. Yeah, well, that's going to be interesting. So when do you think we know? I'll close with this and ask. Put it this way, when should we next have another conversation on Bulwark on Sunday? I mean, when will we know something appreciably different after the August? I mean, it's early mid September. I mean, what does history suggest in terms of things beginning to gel or coalesce or move or not move in terms of the overall political landscape?
- [42:16]
Ron Klain
History suggests the generic it's works for the president's party, not better right from the summer to the fall. So that's important. I don't know. I mean, I would say, you know, you know, Democrats, as I said, Dan Cena, who ran the DCCC in 2018, said that Democrats are still being defined now by the, the national image of the party, which is negative. They have to establish their independent identity in these districts. That doesn't really happen until October. You know, I mean that's, it's, I think we will know. You know, I mean, to me, like I, I just keep my eye on Trump's approval. Like I, like again because like maybe this is going, you know, I go back to where I started. I mean, like I feel like the core question of 26 has revealed itself already or has coalesced already. Can Republicans win substantially more voters who disapprove of Trump than they did during his first term? That's it. Like that is the core question. And other things influence that, like who Democrats nominate and you know, what's happening in the party. But that is like the analytical number. The reason Republicans are not freaking out about this election is because Democrats are way underperforming what they should be by historic standards among people who disagree with Trump. But it's not clear to me at all that that is something that is sustainable for Republicans all the way through Election Day.
- [43:37]
Bill Kristol
And the other point which you made is that makes a big difference if that 80 versus 90%
- [43:44]
Ryan Seacrest
winning 80 or
- [43:44]
Bill Kristol
90% of those disapprovers is 80 or 90% of 64% or 58%. Right. I would just do the right on the Math.
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- [43:52]
Ron Klain
I mean, if he's.
- [43:53]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, right.
- [43:54]
Ron Klain
If he's at 62% disapproval on election day, you can win 80% of them and you'll be fine, you know, or even two or whatever it is. You don't. And, and like I said, as we were talking about, by definition, as it gets higher, it includes more people in his base. We're not going to vote Democratic, so the number comes down a little, but 1012 points, I mean, that just seems different. Plus, you know, the other thing we should say is that Trump is not doing anything really to respond to the concerns of voters who have soured on him. And Republicans are doing strikingly little other than resisting the weaponization fund to, you know, establish any kind of independent identity, unlike the Republicans in Trump's first term. You know, we saw plenty of Democrats in 22 and 20, 24 win Senate races in places either where Biden was underwater or where Harris lost. I mean, that's, you know, in 24.
- [44:44]
Commercial Disclaimer Voice
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- [44:44]
Ron Klain
Gallego, Rosen, Baldwin, Slotkin, all one. You know, they have more leeway to be, you know, they're not a dependent variable in the, Trump, in their, in their party's equation. So I think it is hard for Republicans to establish that kind of separation. Trump doesn't let you. And, you know, that's one thing that could, that could allow even El said to win, I mean, which is that Rogers has wrapped himself around Trump, who I would suspect is going to be at 58% disapproval or higher on Election Day in Michigan. Right. I mean, you know, and so it's, it's, it's, it's going to be harder for them to separate in that way.
- [45:25]
Bill Kristol
So. Interesting. Okay, we'll have to get, I'm thinking, halfway till Election Day. We need to do this again. So mid September for me is going to be, and I think we will know a lot more. I mean, you get the August recess, things either settle in or revert back to the mean a little bit or not, or there's a little dynamic sometimes of its own that establishes when they self, when they get back in the district or whatever. Hard for them to establish a different identity, honestly. I guess they're not going to be here voting on anything. But then we do get a couple of weeks in early September where you could really get a government shutdown. I mean, I feel like mid September could be interesting.
- [45:56]
Ron Klain
I'm guessing, like, the generic is like one to one and a half points better for Democrats in mid September. And you know, the problem. I mean, look, I mean, in some of these Senate races, the problem may be that polling never tells us. I mean it's never, I mean, you know, these places, if Democrats win Ohio, Texas and Alaska, how many points is it going to be by, you know, maybe Alaska could get a little bigger in the ranked choice, but like if they went Ohio in Texas, it's going to be like a point, a point and a half. And you know, it's hard to feel real confident about polling telling you that, you know, so it may be that, you know, I, again, like, I, I'm like, with all of this stuff moving around, what's Trump's approval? How many of those disapprovers are leaning toward voting Democrats? Like, just like that's that at least for me. That's like my eye on the ball kind of thing that I'm watching.
- [46:46]
Bill Kristol
No, that's terribly helpful in helping us keep our eyes on the ball. So Ron, thanks for taking the time to join me today. Have an easy flight back from Michigan to California and yeah, we'll do this again. We'll be in touch, of course. Anyway, do this again in six weeks or we can do it more sooner if there's big news or something that really makes you think, you know, things are going one direction or the other. So anyway, thanks, Ron.
- [47:05]
Ron Klain
For me, always good to be with you and the Bull Work audience.
- [47:08]
Bill Kristol
Thanks and, and thank you all for joining us on Bull Work on Sunday.
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