← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Sarah Longwell
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Sarah Longwell
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- [00:45]
Bill Kristol
Hi, Bill Kristol here. Welcome to Bulwark on Sunday. Sarah Longwell and I are actually doing this on Saturday so we can celebrate Mother's Day appropriately. Don't want to be accused of, you know, disrupting a traditional American holiday by insisting on the Bulwark on Sunday live. So make an exception. And we're going, we're doing it a day early. But Sarah, thanks for joining me on this Saturday.
- [01:05]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, thanks for having me. Let's get into it. Lots going on.
- [01:08]
Bill Kristol
Happy Mother's Day. One day ahead of time.
- [01:10]
Sarah Longwell
And Mother's Day is a big, it's a real big holiday in our house. Cause there's two of us and so, you know, it's like the, it's the high holiday of our house.
- [01:20]
Bill Kristol
That's nice. That's very charming. A lot of news this past week. You and Sam Stein discussed on Friday the redistricting, the opinion of the Virginia Supreme Court on redistricting and, and certain amount of defeatism I'd say coming from or a lot of hand wringing from Democrats. Understandable, I suppose, and a little bit of defeatism from some on the left. But you've got strong feelings about this and I have some thoughts too. So what should people, what do we do? What do we do this may. Here we are on May 10. What's the situation?
- [01:48]
Sarah Longwell
Look, first of all, this decision is a real, it's just a gut punch from an actual, you know, where, where it looked like things were going. This, this blue wave in the traditional way we talk about it. Blue tsunam like the fact that Dems are up. Like there's just been a lot of confidence going into the midterms. And when Trump kicked off his redistricting war, the mid cycle redistricting to try to eke out more seats to see if he could offset the enthusiasm by Democrats. You know, Democrats got in the game and fought back. And I think that was one of the first big signs of life we've seen from Democrats is being willing to say, no, no, no, we're going to go toe to toe with you on this. And it was looking like Trump had made a mistake that it was gonna net out in Democrats favor between them winning the referendum in California, winning the referendum in Virginia. And so. And it was, so it was looking like it was gonna be like a, like a rake stepping situation for the Republicans and Trump. Then came the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court, you know, guts the VRA and also allows states to go ahead and redistrict even though they're already voting in their primaries. Like, you know, you got places like Louisiana where Landry just suspends a primary that's already going and says, no, no, no, because we're going to redistrict. Tennessee's redistricting. These other states in the south, the Supreme Court gave them the green light to do it so that they were already in a position to pick up more seats than it originally people had originally anticipated. And then the Virginia Supreme Court yesterday throws out the results of the referendum in which Abigail Spanberger had, they had won. They had won via ballot initiative. People had gone, they had voted to be able to redistrict. And Abigail Spanberger spent a lot of political capital on this, meaning she was, you know, it was like basically the first really big thing she did. And so it was important that they won, even though the referendum won by a much lower margin than she won. But it got across the finish line. The courts throw it out on a technicality that I have been trying to figure out how, what level of rage I should feel at the technicality. I'm like, do they have a point? I need to talk to some lawyers because I'm trying to figure out if there's, if there's something to this or if it's a pure partisan court action, like what I think the Supreme Court's was. And so I understand why people feel this gut punch, because it feels like, wait a minute, we went and voted for this, we passed it, we did it exactly the right way, and now it's getting thrown out. Okay, all that said anger, anger, what do you do in the face of that? Okay? And I think that the justifiable sort of rage people are feeling is, needs to be channeled in a better way than what I am seeing online now, granted, what happens online is not always exactly real life, but there's sort of a sense of, man, let's, you know, I just, you see some of these popular people who are online influencers saying, like, go run these people down, run these Supreme Court justices and like, get in their faces and call them pigs. And it's just like, there is only one way out of this. And I sort of got into it with some of them online, which was a mistake, and I have to stop doing it because I was saying, like, hey, actually, the way out of this is that you have to persuade more voters to vote for Democrats. Like, that is the only way. We have to persuade more voters to vote for Democrats in 2026. And the response is sort of like, we just voted. We voted for this referendum and they threw it out. What are we supposed to do? Vote harder. And I want to respond to that because that there's a part of me that's like, okay, fair. Like, you're like, we are voting, we are winning. And they're just throwing this stuff out. It's not that you have to vote harder. It's that more people have to vote with you. Okay? This is about building a much bigger movement. And a movement that starts with, you know, are we. How are we going to burn it all down? Is not going to get you where you want to go in the midterms. And I'll just. I sort of went and read about nonviolent resistance. And I think that one of the things to understand is that throughout history, especially modern history, like very much modern history, nonviolent resistance has been much more effective at making change than violent resistance. And so there are all kinds of ways to do nonviolent resistance that I think before we get to the place where everybody jumps to these extreme responses. Right. Is to say, all right, well, what can we do in the context of like, not an illiberal reaction, not one that brings violence into the equation where you say, okay, we've got to figure out how to persuade a lot more people. We got to put bodies in the streets. We've got to create a sense of urgency among the voters. We have to win in 2026 by the biggest margin possible. So what are the things you do to make that happen? Number one, you have to win the Senate, okay? And that means Michigan, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa. And we are still in the primary selection phase of a lot of these races. And so people should be looking to steely eyed pragmatism around which candidate is most likely to win, which candidate is most likely to win against the Republican in the general election. That's Number one. Number two, you have to get Trump below 30%. So I sort of. I. My first real laying out of the Bush line was with you on this podcast where we talked about getting Trump below 32%. I think that Trump is. Look, Trump is nearing that. He's in the mid-30s in most of the polls. Let's get him lower, because the lower you can get Trump, the lower you can get Republicans, the more you can get voters to say, this administration is failing us. They've got us into a war. Gas prices are way up, Costs are way up. People are enraged. They are failing. This is how you get to a D 10, D 12 on the generic ballot. That is how you engineer an election of overwhelming force to ensure that you have political power. Like, if you want structural reform. So I hear a lot of people being like, we need to expand the court. Now, that's one of reform I don't agree with, because I would do term limits. I would do age restrictions, like, whatever. That's just a decision I do. I believe the court does need to be reformed, but I think there's a whole number of institutional Democratic reforms that need to be enacted. To do that, though, you've got to get political power first. You have to get political power. We do not live in a country where you can take political power by force. You can only do it by persuading the maximum amount of people to come with you and vote with you. And so that is the thing that I'm feeling this morning that was good
- [09:17]
Bill Kristol
and eloquent and powerful. I mean, I just have a few footnotes, all of which I think complement what you're saying. A, I've been through a bunch of these midterms, including ones where I was on the very much on the winning side, the Republican side in 94, for example. And there's zigzags. I mean, none of these things goes in a straight line for 12 months. And so there was a very good several months with November's elections. And then, as you say, the increasing data from the polls and your focus groups about the direction things were going, the act continuing Democratic, wildly Democratic over performance in special elections. The state Senate race in Michigan, which is a swing state, incidentally, a district Harris carried by one point. The Democrat won by 20 points up around Saginaw on Tuesday. So the evidence remains there. There are some zigzags. This is a real setback. But secondly, so A just accepts that they'll be zigzags. B. This is a real setback, but people are being a little too fatalistic about it in Tennessee, where they really did this dramatic redistricting to destroy the majority minority district. The black district in Memphis ironically been represented for 20 years by White, as it happens, who's responsive to their constituents, though? So that's kind of good. That's democracy. Right. Kind of puts the lie to the fact that everything is identity polit. Anyway, this district's been split up into three districts where the black areas are broken up and put into white rural areas so that they get kind of swamped. I was on a call Friday about this and someone has looked at it closely in 2018 when Tennessee had a good Democratic candidate, Phil Graderson, for the Senate. So it's a good year for Tennessee Democrats, but may not be better. This year he got 49 or 48% of the vote in the three districts. As currently, as newly constituted, these are not impossible races to win, and the same is true in other states, including in Virginia. I think you're going to go from a plus four outcome, probably, but quite conceivably to plus two or three, I think almost certainly actually to plus one still. So it's not. People are slightly overdoing. Look, the Republicans aren't idiots. They have good computers and they can write them. They can draw the maps and they're being extremely aggressive and going for it all this year once the Supreme Court opened the door. No question about that. So worth deploring that and being angry about that. But people shouldn't. Yeah, they should turn out voters. And especially in the, obviously in states and districts where this has happened, including, I'd say, black voters who are being treated a little bit as if they're helpless pawns here. They could turn out and vote a lot. And that gets to your point about the Senate, which I've been saying for a while the Senate is in play. And there are plenty. There's plenty of evidence. It's a poll in Kansas that came out this week where it's not clear who the Democratic candidate will be. But this was done by Patrick Schmidt's campaign, a young veteran who's a state legislator losing to Marshall, the incumbent Republican. 49, 45. No one knows Schmidt. I mean, he's known in his own state Senate district and he's within 4 points. Trump is underwater by 7 points in Kansas, which gets to your next point. And Senate races, whatever you think of the Senate, which is generically this district, what's the word? I'M looking for gerrymander, as it were, because the rural states have so much more representation. But it can't be changed. Right midterm, the same Mary Patolza won in Alaska. It's the same state that she wanted, the sole congressional seat there. She's now running against Sulliv. She can win again. And I think this is very much true in other states. So I think the Senate people have been too pessimistic about. They've gotten a little more optimistic, but they really need to focus on that, because I think the House will come through. If the House doesn't come through, we're in a lot of trouble. And I think the House is going to come through. I think it could come through with decent numbers. But the Senate's So key for 2027, 28, in terms of stopping some really bad things from happening. Checking Trump real accountability, no confirmation of very few confirmations of judges, including maybe Supreme Court, but certainly at the district appellate court. All kinds of laying the predicate for being able to govern again, really, in 2029. So I'm very much where you are on all of this. People just need to both be angry, but calm down a little bit and really focus on what has to be done. We've seen plenty of victories already. If we can get the margins that Democrats got in November of 2025 in real elections and with good candidates, but not, you know, not super great candidates necessarily in states that were Democratic but had been moving, Republicans had outperformed in 2024. If you can get anything like the increase from 24 to 25, you can get that in 26. They can overcome these. These obstacles, I think. But to get that, you do need persuasion. And that's now part of final point I'll make. And I'm curious what you think about this. I think sentence one says persuasion when you say it, because you make clear it's a kind of, how should I put this, aggressive form of persuasion, most of which involves driving Trump's numbers, a lot of which, most of which, I guess it's fair to say, involves driving Trump's persuading people to vote to check Trump. The answer sometimes is, oh, the Democrats aren't popular. And persuasion's very difficult and voters are dug in some truth to all that, obviously. But a lot of persuasion is dissuasion, right? It's you need to check Trump. And that part, I think we've had a lot of progress. People are too. We're always taking it for granted that Trump's in Let's say the high 30s even. That's a long way from 50. We didn't think he was going to be in the high 30s six, nine months ago, remember then the narrative was all Trump's. He just can't dent Trump's popularity. He's got a mystical hold on these voters. They can't be changed. You know, what are we going to do? Oh, my God.
- [14:44]
Sarah Longwell
I always believe you could drive him down.
- [14:46]
Bill Kristol
You were right. And I was in all these phone calls, just to go on for a minute, more about with elite types, how are we going to persuade the people the problem turned out, it's not been so far the people. The problem is the elites and their institutions, which are not incidentally leaving Trump the way they should be. But that's another conversation. Anyway, his numbers are down, I don't know, probably about 37, 38 if you average them all, but that's pretty far down. That is where Bush was in 2006, almost exactly. It'd be great to get him to 32, which is your Bush line. That was Bush in 2008. Be great to get Trump to that in 2026. Maybe 27 or 28 is more realistic. But I agree, the Trump number remains just so fundamental. Every study shows that in a midterm election when the president's party has controlled both houses, so it really becomes a referendum on do you want to let him keep doing what he wants to do, or do you want to elect a party that will check it? So, yeah, I agree. People need to toughen up a little, but also calm down a little at the same time and then really work hard on the persuasion dissuasion side of things. And that, that obviously will be different messages in different states and different localities. This voting rights stuff isn't popular. I can't believe that people think this is a great idea in a lot of parts of the country, including the other states. Right. I mean, you know, they could be more turn Michigan and Ohio because of what's happening in Tennessee, in a way. Right. Is that the kind of country we want where you just. And Mississippi and Alabama, like, just go back to no representation, in a sense for blacks in the south anyway. That's my footnotes to your excellent rant. And on the persuasion dissuasion thing, you do the focus groups. I mean, okay, concretely, you've told the Democrats, expand the. Get more voters on board, expand the message, be more effective at the messaging and explaining why it's so important. One in particular,
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- [17:59]
Sarah Longwell
Number one, let's talk about what offense looks like going into the summer. Gas prices are going to be extraordinary. The summer is when people travel. It's when they go on their road trips. It's when they're filling up their RVs, especially Trump voters and their, their boats. Look, it's when people are looking to, to, to be out having fun, right? They're going to barbecue, guess what? Meat's really expensive. They're gonna, they're gonna drink, guess what? All of alcohol, because of the tariffs is, is more expensive. They're gonna drive places, gas is out of control. They're gonna fly places, gas is gonna make all of that stuff more expensive. And so the ability to hammer for voters that Donald Trump is messing with your summer plans, making it, oh, you know this, what is the month that voters really turn on presidents? It's August. August is often for whether it was Trump's first term, whether it was Biden, and honestly, that is like usually the August of the first term is kind of when like the honeymoon ends. But like the August of the Second year, I'm sorry, the August of the first year is when the honeymoon ends. The second year can be when you put a fork in the sky.
- [19:22]
Bill Kristol
Just look. In 2006, that was really the case. I'm here in Virginia. That's when the bottom fell out. And George Allen, who was supposed to be coasting to reelection to the Senate so he could run for president in 2008, suddenly started to fade. And Jim Webb, a kind of flukish Democratic nominee, in a sense, nice guy, but not your typical Democratic nominee, came from behind and ended up catching him in 94, very much in August. So I very much read the summers when. But by September, the voters have made up their minds to some degree.
- [19:50]
Sarah Longwell
That's right. And so we have. We are going into summer months when people are going to be at their premium, angry about prices and costs. That puts us into September and October, right, when we will have the Democratic candidates locked. And this is when you organize. This is when you go hard. This is when you go hard at Trump. I mean, I just, I'm watching these guys, the Duffys, okay? Sean and Rachel Duffy. One is a. Rachel is a Fox News morning person. He is the Secretary of Transportation. I know them both from the real world and the real world road rules, challenges. Because they used to be reality TV stars just like Donald Trump. What did they do for the last seven months? They went on a road trip that was sponsored by the companies that Sean Duffy regulates in his current role as Secretary of Transportation. And they made a documentary of the whole, whole thing. I'm sorry, you went on a big family road trip for seven months to make content, to make, to make a documentary content so you can all get a little bit more famous while everybody else is paying for higher gas prices. That's how you go on offense, right? Like, that is like, tell the story. John Ossoff's doing a good job of this in Georgia. Tell the story of Donald Trump's corruption. Tell the story of Donald Trump's ballroom. Donald Trump gets a billion of your dollars for his ballroom while your prices go up. Like, then this is where I don't want to push back on your notion of calm down. But, like, I actually don't think people need to be more calm. I just think they need to have the appropriate direction for their anger, which is not violence ever. Which is not sort of throwing up your hands and feeling like it's over. It's not doubting that democracy can work. It is about being like, okay, so this is, this is, this is. We're going to play it as it lays. And they should feel optimistic about the fact that Trump is at a low ebb and can go lower and has the potential to go lower over the next three months. And so let's push him as low as the lower that Trump goes, so goes the Republican Party. It diminishes enthusiasm when people show up to vote. Dems actually have a real structural advantage in the midterms because despite these sort of angry people online, people who show up to vote are a lot of these, like, you know, Normie Dems coming out in droves and droves. Many of them are our old people, people who used to vote for John McCain and Mitt Romney and now vote for Democrats. And they always vote in midterms. Republicans don't. And so you want Trump to be on the ballot for the people who hate him and not on the ballot for the people who love him. And that is doable.
- [22:34]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. And I think, you know, people, this notion that driving Trump's numbers down translates into voting either for Democrats or at least staying home and not voting for Trump sounds a little abstract. A, there's a lot of just evidence that that's the case. B, it makes sense. I mean, if you, if you. Do we want Trump to control Congress for the next two years or not. That's the fundamental issue. And so the Trump question is the central question, however much not to say that individual candidates and individual issues at the state and local level don't matter. One has to be also aggressive. I know you counsel this all the time in an opportunistic way. If they give you a chance to really exploit something, do so in this ballroom, which is a billion dollars. It's one thing for Trump, for the corruption, that's terrible and worth really exploiting. And not exploiting is not even the word. Just pointing out is terrible. They are, are asking Congress, the Republican members of Congress, to actually vote for this billion dollars. So it's not just a theoretical, gee, you didn't step up when Trump was doing this bad thing. It's you voted affirmatively to give a billion dollars for this unnecessary ballroom, allegedly for the security stuff. If there is security problem, it's because Trump destroyed the East Wing. The White House was secure. And incidentally, the White House has been secure for the last six months since the White as the East Wing was destroyed. And a million of events happened there. The King Charles was hosted there and no one was, my God, you can't show up. It's insecure. It's all ridiculous. And they need to just hammer them when they have a chance like this and not overthink things. In a way, obviously, the prices and the cost is the central issue in people's minds, but there are others. Final point I'll make on this is one big advantage. Another big advantage Democrats have is sometimes you just have a general malaise, a sense of country's not going well, and that hurts an incumbent president. But what hurts most is if you can tie the things people don't like to the decisions this president and this Congress have made. And that's where the tariffs, I think, come back to be very important, where you can really, in Midwestern states, say the reason we're having a farm economy recession, where bankruptcies, fertilizer, et cetera, has to do with actual the tariffs that Trump put on the tariffs. The Chinese retaliated, and your soybeans are rotting in a silo somewhere in Kansas. I mean, it's not theoretical. It's not. Well, everything's kind of tough in a way. The 2020, I've always thought the pandemic. JVL was always so frustrated that Trump paid less of a price than he should have for his unbelievable mismanagement of it. But people did have a sense of. It's just like no one's ever been through this and it's being screwed up all over the world. And maybe Trump screwed it up a little, too. But that's not the case with the terrorists, and it's certainly not the case with the war. There's no mystery about why gas prices have gone up by 40% in the last two months. They went up the moment Trump launched the war. They've got up because of the way he's conducted the war and his failure to reopen the strait. There's no, you know, exogenous macroeconomic variables going on here. So I think it's so same with the fertilizer stuff in the Midwest, incidentally.
- [25:33]
Sarah Longwell
It's.
- [25:33]
Bill Kristol
Which depends on petrochemicals that come through the straits. So I think it's an unusual opportunity to really tie these. These things people are correctly unhappy about directly to Trump and in some cases, directly to the Republican Congress right now.
- [25:48]
Sarah Longwell
Iowa Democrats haven't won Iowa since 2000. Well, they. Barack Obama won it twice. Right, right, right. And then they have basically haven't won it since. You can win Iowa this year. You know, Turek is a. Is a good candidate, I think. I think better than Walls, because this is Iowa. Like people after. I know Walls is the more progressive of the two. This is this is Iowa. And Turk's an interesting candidate. It. He can win like you could win an Iowa. This is where instead of, instead of going and screaming at the Virginia Supreme Court, like, be mad and figure out how to win Iowa like that is correctly. Channel that anger. Go to Iowa and help organize. Send money to Turek. Help, Help. Let's, let's put up billboards all over the state reminding people what Donald Trump has done to farmers and to crater the state's economy. This is all doable. It just, I think people have to, yeah, don't get defeatist and stay focused on the opportunity in front of us. Like Donald Trump. And so much of this is of his own making. And the voters do know, look, I sit through the focus groups and everybody's like, ugh, how can you sit through the focus groups? How can you listen to these voters? The focus groups have been downright. I've been downright giddy in the focus groups the last few months because voters are so mad. Trump voters are so mad at Donald Trump, they think he's lied to them. They think that gas prices are way too high. He hasn't done anything about grocery prices. They can't afford stuff. Their hearts are like breaking over how horrible the economic situation is. Okay. Obviously it's, it very much sucks that people have to hurt like that. And that's why this, it's all about the contrast. Like, you don't have to do one or the other. Go on offense against Trump. Yes. But also present the contrast. Your life is getting worse. He's getting a ballroom. Democrats have to be like, we're a better alternative. Let's explain why we're a better alternative. We're going to focus on affordability. We're going to focus on making your life better. We're not going to let him spend a billion of your dollars on a ballroom while your grocery prices go up. Like, that is how you present the contrast. And that's what you need, I think, to make people as mad as you can at Trump and then be like, and I'm going to do something about it.
- [28:01]
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Bill Kristol
Source Surkana total US multi outlet white sauce dollars units pound sales calendar year 2025 and I think you've stressed this recently, well, throughout. But I mean, especially you found this in the focus groups recently. A lot of unhappiness that sor. That links it together in the sense that Trump's not focused on you, he's focused on himself. All the self indulgence, the megalomania, the ballroom, the, you know, just it. All the arch. I mean, all this nonsense, which incidentally. Well, I'll say a word about that in a second. But yeah. Which I do think contrasts with, I mean, his most effective thing in 2016. I remember being in Cleveland at the Republican convention and watching him say, Hillary Clinton says we're with her. I think that was her slogan, right?
- [29:40]
Sarah Longwell
I'm with her.
- [29:41]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I'm with her. I say to you, I'm with you. And I thought at that moment he could win this. That is a very effective jujitsu thing on Hillary's thing, which one understands what Hillary was trying to get at and all that. But it turned out, I think, to be a mistake. And Trump rode the I'm with youh stuff for so long when he shouldn't have been able to and whatever. And I do feel like that's finally being undercut partly just by the reality of things, but partly by the fact that he so conspicuously cares so much more about his ballroom and his arch and all this nonsense than about what's happening to real people out around the country. I mean, that's where the little things, I think, do add up. What he just can't speak about any issue without going off into his own edifice complex and wish for. To recognize himself, because he knows that other people probably won't later on want to build monuments to him. So he's got to build them.
- [30:36]
Sarah Longwell
This is the other thing is like, Trump is old. He's very old. Guys talk about how old he is, never stop talking about how old he is, how he's. His hands are bruised from what aggressive handshaking he's losing his mind. All he talks about is how he keeps taking cognitive tests. They only give you those cognitive tests if they think something's wrong with you. Right. And also, so every time he describes one of the cognitive tests, it's like, can you identify the giraffe in this picture? This is the President of the United States. But they, but the voters do know that the war is his fault and they know that the tariffs are his fault. This is actually really important because I think for a lot of times people can sort of say, well, Trump, it's not Trump's fault. We're still living in Biden's economy. Right. That's not it. People know that Trump's tariffs are driving up cost and they know that the war in Iran is directly linked to oil prices and their gas prices. You've got them. You don't have to. You don't have to necessarily. It's not just that you, I mean, you obviously should blame him all the time. We also just need to remind people, persuasion isn't about changing people's minds. Persuasion is about unlocking things that people already know. Billboards on every highway as people drive and as people contemplate how much, as they, as they do the math about how much gas they can get, how much gas it's going to take, what it's going to cost them to fill up their car are. Let them know everywhere. Trump did this and it's painful for you. That, to me is the kind of offense I'm talking about. The. Stop crying, start sweating.
- [32:08]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, that's good. I hadn't thought about the Duffys. Yeah, I guess they didn't pay for their own gas in this seven months jaunt across the whole country. Right. I mean, I haven't looked at that. There's only two things.
- [32:17]
Sarah Longwell
Either we paid for it as taxpayers or they got. What I saw was that they got corporate sponsors to do it. And those corporate sponsors are people that like, have, you know, have to do stuff with the federal government. It's, it is corrupt. It is the kind of just sort of blase corruption that this government engages in every single day. When I say it's about. Everything's about the economy, everything's about affordability. Every issue can be about that. Epstein is about affordability because it's use. These are the elites, unaccountable. These are unaccountable elites who. They hide things from you. You know, the war in Iran is an economic issue. Like every, literally just about the ballroom can be an economic issue. You Just have to say, this is the locus of people's anger. Attach everything to it.
- [33:09]
Bill Kristol
And I think they have to say the only thing you can do and you can't vote on presidency in 2026. We don't have that parliamentary system where he loses a vote of confidence and leaves office. The one thing you can do is put in place a Congress that will stop as much of this as possible from happening as can be stopped. That will expose what's happening and that will resist Trump. I mean, that's where the Republican Congress going along with everything. The worst people, the people Trump's had to fire from the Cabinet, Christine Bam Bondi confirmed by the Republican Senate. I feel like that's a bigger issue than people realize that especially on the Senate side, they are complicit in all of this. And if you don't like the duffies, guess who voted to confirm them. So, I mean, I feel like there's a. Tying it back to Congress because that's who you're voting for actually in 2026 is pretty important. And there are times when there's been fairly effective efforts by the party, party in Congress to sort of distance itself a little bit from a president. Doesn't usually work that well, honestly. But you still pay a price. But still. And say, no, no, no, we're willing to stand up to him. But here there's been no evidence of a willingness to stand up to him. And therefore very easy to. I mean, to honestly and authentically say, this is your chance to stop this, to at least. Well, to stop, to halt. For at least you can't reverse everything but to halt the stuff that you are most upset about. And they voted over and over again for this war to prevent a real vote on authorizing this war. They have voted against allowing a vote on the tariffs. Right. I mean, there's so many cases where. And now they're going to vote for the ballroom and incidentally for ICE and Border Patrol funding a huge amount of money for them not paid for increasing the deficit. And they can make Republican ish sounding arguments to Democrats. And totally honestly, Trump's deficit's gonna be higher, you know, than the deficit he took over he inherited. You know, that's just a fact.
- [34:55]
Sarah Longwell
You know, I mean, we could, we could do this. But I think the point has been made. The point has been made.
- [35:00]
Bill Kristol
We have made the point. That was an excellent rant you began with. And it's. I think it really. No, but people need to listen. And they. Yes, you're right. Calm down. Is not quite the right formulation for me. They need to be angry, but focused and really work to make this November what it really could be. I think it could be a very big wave, but none of these things is inevitable and there'll be hiccups and bumps in the road. We got a pretty big bump in the last 10 days from the Supreme Court and then the Virginia Supreme Court and then the state legislatures being so aggressive. The aggressiveness is a good reminder, though. These people will do whatever they can to keep power. And that's another reason we need a Democratic Congress in 2027, 2028, because that Trump administration doing whatever it can to keep power, they want that corruption to keep going. That attitude is not. Well, that's been fun. Now we just give it up, right? And giving them a Republican Congress, we see what that means across the board efforts to keep the corruption going and to stay in power. So yet another reason really need Democrats there to check the Trump administration.
- [35:57]
Sarah Longwell
One of the things I really argue in the book is about how this isn't like one election is necessary but not sufficient. And so you are trying to figure out right now how to build to win in 26, to slingshot with that momentum into 28 with a real leader of the party that can beat, whether it's Vance Rubio, Tucker, whoever, and Trump's weakness again, Trump. Trump being at 30% when he leaves office with if. If the vast majority of people consider that he was a failure as a president, that this second term was a failure, that is also how you win. And then when you have that political power, that is when you can make structural reforms. Like, I don't know what to do. I do. I think part of what's happening is that people's level of frustration with the institutions like Congress, like the courts, that are basically giving Trump more and more power, make them want to sort of demand reforms of those institutions, which. Agreed. But you're not gonna. You can't do any structural reform without political power. It is a necessary condition. And this. I'll just close on this with Democrats, your voters, because I do a lot of talking to Democratic voters, too. They are so angry. They want you to be so much more aggressive than you're being. They want wartime generals. And like, you wanna know why Graham Platner happens in Maine? No one's interested in the old establishment candidate. Their voters are not interested. Their voters are getting more and more sort of. And I think Republicans may end up ruing the day a little bit because there's just this total sense among Democrats saying they don't play by any of the rules. Why should we play by the rules? We tried this, we tried Michelle Obama's. When they go low, we go high and we're done with it. And if that's how Democratic voters feel like the Democratic Party needs to find a way to harness that energy into productive electoral means, which means they cannot lead from behind. You have to get out in front and help voters see what the opportunities are to take back power, be leaders. Right now, I'm sort of the biggest frustration is that the other side is back on its heels in a lot of ways. And, like, they are vulnerable in all these ways, which is why it's the time to push and go hard and go on offense. But all of the things that Democrats are sort of just like reaching for, like, we need to do the courts or we need to have national popular. None of that stuff can happen right now. The only thing that happened is in seven months, we are having an election. It's not even that. How far is it? What are we got? June, July, August, September, October. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's like six months. That's six months of work to take the first major step in handcuffing Trump and taking back political power.
- [38:47]
Bill Kristol
Well said. This has been a great conversation and thank you for taking the time this Saturday to do it. And for those of you watching on Sunday, happy Mother's Day.
- [38:57]
Sarah Longwell
Happy Mother's Day to everybody.
- [39:03]
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- [39:27]
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