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Rest of the show.
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Hey everybody. Welcome to here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Bissugin for our very last episode of 2025. If you're a regular listener, and I hope you are, I do not have to tell you that this year was pivotal. Politically speaking. Republicans took over with a governing trifecta. Within days, the President signed dozens of executive orders, many of which are still being challenged in court. We saw the rise in the fall of the Department of Government Efficiency, which led to mass layoffs of federal workers. There was the longest ever government shutdown and of course, squabbles between Democrats and Republicans about where to take the country next. A major flashpoint amongst all of this is cost of living. While Trump rated this economy as an A + + + +, his approval rating slid. That finally gave Democrats an opening to rack up some W's by campaigning on affordability. In New York City, 34 year old Democratic socialist and now mayor elect Zorhamdani confirmed to New Yorkers that the rent is too darn high because of you.
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We will make this city one that working people can love and live in again.
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And then just across the river in New Jersey, incoming Governor Mikey Sherrill said she'd declare a state of emergency to deal with utility costs. These are the struggles that keep families up at night and for far too long. Career politicians have promised to do something about it. But nothing seems to change in New Jersey and I've had enough. Abigail Spamberger became the first woman elected governor of Virginia. You all chose Leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most, lowering costs, keeping our communities safe, and strengthening our economy for every Virginian. Now the question becomes, can Democrats carry that message and that success at the ballot box into 2026 and the midterms? Today, we're going to take a look ahead to the coming year in politics. And I can think of no two better people to ring in the political New Year with than chief data correspondent Steve Kornacki and chief Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles. Hey, guys.
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Hey. Yes, Yasmin.
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C
Traditionally, the incumbent party does not do well in midterm elections. That is, the President ends up losing the House and possibly the Senate as well. Why is this midterms to you, Steve, from your perspective, so, so important?
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B
Every election poses new questions or clarifies old questions.
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C
Right.
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B
And you know, there were new questions that were posed by 2024, Trump winning the way he did. He expanded the Republican coalition with Demogr that the party has not traditionally performed well, especially Hispanic voters, younger non white voters, young African American male voters. We saw this. So we saw a lot of sort of non white expansion and youth expansion of the Republican vote in 2024. What's left of that in 2026. Yeah, I think it'll give us clues about, you know, where to look in.
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C
2028 from the Dynamics of the House and the Senate and the Capitol. Ryan, what are you gonna be watching as we head towards the midterms this year?
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A
Well, I think Steve raises a good point about the way traditionally midterm elections play out. And they traditionally are the advantage to the party that's not in power. And I do think there is a dynamic that could exist here where Democrats maybe over analyze the results of what happened in 2025 in races that candidly, they should have won. Right. They should have won Virginia, they should have won New Jersey. Obviously, they should have won New York City. But I think that they, what they were most buoyed by is how much they won those races. And given the fact that they came on the heels of Donald Trump doing much better in both of those places. So Democrats are now back into a position where they're holding serve, where they're supposed to hold serve. The question now is, has that bled over into some of these other districts that have traditionally gone red or have not been as blue as they've been in the past? And while in the past, you know, the, the kind of, the trajectory has been a president gets elected and then there's a big wave election in the midterms where either the Republicans or Democrats end up with a net of 30 or 40 seats. We've seen such an increased polarization in this country where even if the president in power isn't necessarily all that popular, people tend to come home to the party that they identify themselves with. I just wonder, and Steve can maybe speak to this better from the data and analytics side of it, if we are kind of gone past the idea of wave elections because of how gerrymandered the process is and because of how entrenched people are in their political identity, the headwinds right now show us that, you know, there's kind of this Democratic boom that could potentially happen here. But I'm still of the belief that until I see it, I'm not quite sure that is going to happen, maybe in the way that Democrats are hoping based on what they saw in November of 25.
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B
Well, it's interesting one, maybe a point of reference here, a good point of reference here would be the first Trump midterm 2018 from his first term. And if you remember, as a blue wave midterm election and Republicans lost 40 seats back then, to Ryan's point, when you look at the seats that Democrats flipped in 2018, they were basically all districts that, that either had already voted Democratic in the presidential election. You know, they had voted for Hillary Clinton In 2016, Trump was president. Now they voted for a Democrat for Congress. That was like half the democratic gains in 2018. There are almost no seats on the map in 2026 that are like that. So there's less low hanging fruit, you know, for the Democrats than there was last time. And then the other thing is just about all the other democratic gains in 2018, where districts, this is about 20 seats or so, districts that Trump had won by less than 10 points, really less than about 8 points. And again, there's far fewer of those that are going to be on the board in 2026. So even if Democrats basically perform the exact same as they did in 2018, there's going to be less on the table for them to sort of pick off. So the idea of, you know, do we, do we not have wave elections like we did in the past? I mean, that's. Yeah, I mean, I think the exact same Democratic performance that you saw in 2018, Trump's first midterm, if you got that again, would probably net Democrats 15 to 20 seats instead of 40.
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C
So are there specific House races, Steve, that you're watching, that seem more vulnerable to being flipped than others?
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B
You know, Michigan's got two districts, two Republican held districts that I think would be pretty good tests for 2026. One is going to be an open house seat. Michigan, you know. Right. Trump won it in 16, lost it in 20, won it in 2024. Two key areas there, you know, one of them would be just north of Detroit. Macomb county, we always talk about it. There's the two big bedroom community suburban counties outside Detroit. There's O County, it's the economically upscale one. There's Macomb county. That's the blue collar one. There's a district there, you know, the Macomb county district. It's an open seat currently held by a Republican. He's not running for reelection in the district. Tell me how that district goes. I think that's a really good test right there. Trump won it by 10 points last year. He barely won it in 2020. Where is it in that range? There's two districts out by Grand Rapids and that western part of Michigan that are very interesting to me too, because this is sort of traditionally very Republican territory in Michigan, but it's got less Republican since Trump came on the scene. It's an area where the Trump style of Republicanism is not a good fit with the traditional style of Republicanism that's kind of prevailed there. And Democrats, in fact, were able to pick off one of those seats a couple years ago that I think could be pretty telling.
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C
What about the Senate? What's vulnerable in the Senate right now, Steve?
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B
The most obvious target for Democrats is Maine. Okay, Maine, because you have a state that vote, you know, that hasn't voted Republican and presidential for a long time. You've got a Republican incumbent who's up for reelection. There's Susan Collins. It looks like she said something in the last couple weeks that made you wonder if she's 100% committed here. So we'll see. I suspect she's running.
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C
You want to chime in, Ryan, real quick on that?
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Yeah. I mean, I agree with Steve that Susan Collins, the senator, incumbent senator from Maine, who Democrats have been trying to beat for 20 years and every year think that they've got the opportunity to. I think if she runs, she's still the favorite there. And to Steve's point, she has not definitively said that she's going to run. She hasn't, like, launched her reelection campaign, but she's raised money and she has not said that she's not going to run. And I do think part of it is the Democrats have opportunities here, but they also have opportunities they could mess up. They've Got a competitive primary in Maine right now with the incumbent, Governor Janet Mills. And her biggest opponent right now is a progressive named Graham Platner, who has Bernie Sanders endorsement, is drawing huge crowds, but has a bunch of baggage from his past that has kind of come to light that Republicans are. Are ready to use on him if he were to make it to the general election. So, you know, there's a candidate quality issue in some of these races. There's just the power of the incumbency. I think if Collins, for some reason, doesn't run, that will be a very difficult seat for Republicans to hold. So I agree with Steve in that regard. I also think North Carolina is a key opportunity for Democrats. The incumbent Republican there, Thom Tillis, is not running for reelection. We don't think of North Carol necessarily as a swing state, but keep in mind that's a state that Barack Obama won, that Joe Biden was very competitive in and that Kamala Harris was also competitive in. They've got their dream candidate there in Roy Cooper, who was the Democrat, and they ended up not being able to recruit Lara Trump to run in that seat. And so they're running Michael Watley, a former RNC chairman, who's not a bad candidate, but isn't necessarily the kind of the pizzazz candidate they were looking for. But then on the other side of that, the Democrats have the most difficult hold on the entire map, and that's the state of Georgia. Georgia is increasingly becoming a purple state, but I still think in our minds, we think of that as a red state because of where it is in the South. But Georgia demographically has changed a lot, and it's probably shocking to think that they've had two Democratic senators for quite some time, going all the way back to 2020. And so Jon Ossoff, who was elected six years ago to that spot, is up for reelection. The Republicans, much like the Democrats, are having a hard time figuring out who they're going to run against him because the state's governor, Brian Kemp, decided not to run in that race. So I think that the Democrats have opportunities, but the map is one in which they've got a lot more to defend. If they draw the right candidate and the environment is right, they've got a shot. But I do think that if you talk to most Democratic donors and most power brokers in the Democratic Party, their focus is really on winning back the House, where they think there's a real opportunity. And if the Senate comes along with it, they'll take that kind of as the icing on the cake. But they feel like if they can at least get the Senate back or the House back, that at least provides a roadblock right now for Trump's agenda, which doesn't currently exist in Washington right now.
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The problem for Democrats is you could see them potentially Maine, you could definitely see a world where they win Maine, you could see a world maybe where they win North Carolina, you could see a world where they, where they even defend these seats. We're talking about, certainly that extra seat that they would need if they're actually going to win the majority. Where, where would they scare it up? And I think that would require them ultimately to win a state like Texas. And, you know, I think Iowa, maybe. Iowa, right.
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C
You know, I feel like so many times we have talked about Texas, Texas, Texas, but every time Texas has delivered exactly what we thought Texas was going to deliver.
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Every time, Yasmin, every midterm, I find myself on a sojourn to Texas with the storyline of this is the year for Democrats, and it never pans out that way. And I think the other thing, too, that's important to keep in mind about this, too, is that if you're a Democratic strategist and you're thinking about where to invest your finite amount of resources in a crucial midterm, maybe among the most important midterms in Democratic history, do you spend that money in Texas, or do you invest that money to make sure Jon Ossoff holds onto his seat, or to help Roy Cooper in North Carolina, or to make sure that Hakeem Jeffries has the resources he needs to win the House back? I just think that the Democrats are going to have a lot of tough decisions to make about what they're going to do in Texas. The issue for Democratic donors is Texas is such a great fundraising tool. You can go online and suggest that you're gonna boot a Republican senator from Texas, and that really fires up donors. The best story I have, and I'll make it as quick as I can, I was covering the 2018 midterms in Florida. That was back when Florida was a swing state, and there was a guy named Ron DeSantis who was running for governor there. And Rick Scott was running against the incumbent, Bill Nelson, who was the incumbent Democrat there. It was probably the most important race on the Democrats map in 2018. I was at an event for Bill Nelson, and there was a bellboy working the hotel that I was at, and he saw of our camera equipment, and he said, what are you guys in town here for? And we're cover And I said, we're here to cover the U.S. senate race. And he looked at me and he goes, oh, yeah, you think Beto's gonna win? Talking about the race in Texas.
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C
In Texas.
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A
So here was somebody that was a voter in the most important state in the country and was at least somewhat politically enough connected to it that he was more concerned about what was happening in Texas, a race they honestly had no shot in winning. That story is always in the back of my mind when it comes to Democrats and their hopes about Texas.
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C
When we talk about redistricting, Kornacki, listen, we saw the win in Texas, especially when it came to the Supreme Court decision, the California win for the Democrats. When it comes to Gavin Newsom's redistricting, the governor there, we know other states are going to be trying to do that before the midterms as well. How is that going to change the game?
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I don't think to the degree a lot of folks thought it was going to three months ago, when this first kind of became a thing with Texas taking that first step. I mean, look, the fact that California, the Democrats in California were able to scramble, get this new map that they drew up approved by voters, that's huge. I mean, that map in California probably nets the Democrats five seats. The map in Texas that Republicans have drawn may net Republicans five seats out of Texas. You could look at a couple of those districts, and there's a better Republican chance in those districts now than there was before. But it's by no means a cinch. So I'm not even sure if, if, if Texas and California cancel each other out, Democrats may end up, you know, netting a seat or two more out of California than. Than they get out of Texas. Right now, without any redistricting, Republicans can afford a net loss of two seats, two House seats. The context we're talking about here is in midterm elections, there are only three examples going back a century where the White House party has not lost seats, and they came with giant historical asterisks. 1934, the Great Depression, 1998, the impeachment of Bill Clinton that caused a backlash that benefited Democrats. In 2002, it was the shadow of 911 that propelled Republicans, George W. Bush in that midterm. Every other midterm election going back a century, the White House party loses seats, and it's only a question of how many. And if the cushion for Republicans is only, let's say, five seats, effectively, when has the damage been inside of five seats for the White House party once? 1962, so I think at the beginning of this process there was a sense that Republicans might be able to draw themselves to an effective cushion of 10 plus seats. I don't think it's gonna land anywhere near there.
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We're gonna take a very quick break. We're gonna be back with Ryan Nobles and Steve Encyclopedia Kornacki in just a minute. Stay with us.
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So there's no doubt that affordability is the overarching biggest issue. And I think that under the banner of affordability, healthcare is going to be a big tent pole underneath that umbrella. The cost of housing is going to be a big tent pole under that umbrella. And then just the cost of everyday goods, what you're paying for with groceries, what you're paying for at the gas pump, all of those things. A lot of it is going to be about the vibes of the average American. And we saw the Democrats lose the vibes game going into the 2024 presidential election. They tried to sell Americans on this idea that, no, really, the economy is getting better. Look at all these metrics that tell us it's getting better. But Americans didn't feel better. Americans still don't feel better. So I think you're gonna see both parties try and claim the ground for who has got the best message on affordability. And I think there's a compelling case to be made that whoever Americans believe will end up winning the election in November.
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C
How much can we actually take away from the New York City mayoral race and the Miami mayoral race as well, Both candidates running on affordability. But how do you think that could resonate kind of on a national level, especially when it comes to the midterms?
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Yeah, I mean, look, I always say, trying to export lessons from a New York City mayor's election nationally, I'm always, I say take a big grain of salt there. What we saw this year in these off year elections where you had partisan elections, the Democrats were overperforming. It's consistent with the president with a low approval rating. It's also consistent with something we've seen now for really, you know, the entire Trump era, and that is that the Democratic base is just on fire to vote in every and any election. They vote for president, they vote in midterm elections, but they vote in mayoral elections, they vote in special elections, they vote in school board elections. And so in these like, mayoral races in a place like Miami, I think that's something you're seeing too, is just that Democratic energy is outpacing the Republican energy. And the question is if that Republican energy is going to kind of come up for, for 2026. But I think when it comes to the economy, look, it's just, it's, it's a, it's a sort of a time tested thing in politics. If voters are not feeling good about the economy, they're going to take it out on the incumbent party.
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C
Ryan, have Republicans honed how they're going to message affordability and the response to issues on the economy, aside from pointing at the Biden administration, which we are now arguably inside the Trump administration's, you.
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Know, economy, the answer is no. I think the Republicans have a Tom Brady problem. Let me explain what I mean by that. So, you know, for years, the New England Patriots, much to my chagrin as a Buffalo Bills fan, were the powerhouse in the AFC east and the NFL in general. And, and there was no doubt that during that window of time, it was that Tom Brady was the star quarterback who was the engine that kind of made that whole entire operation run. And during that period of time, there was this perception that New England had the far and away best organization and best franchise. But a lot of that was contingent on the fact that Tom Brady was the best player in football. And as soon as Tom Brady left, you saw the Patriots crater. And I think that right now, Republicans are in kind of the waning stages of the Tom Brady era of the Republican Party and Donald Trump. And what Republicans have not figured out is how they can take the energy and the political dynamism that Donald Trump has and then transfer it to the other players on the field, much like the Patriots were never able to do without Tom Brady. As soon as Tom Brady exited the stage, the Patriots found themselves in a position where they just could not replicate the same level of success. So the problem that Republicans have had during this era of Donald Trump, which has been, you know, in aggregate successful for them, is that they haven't been able to hone a message outside of Donald Trump. And so this is gonna be their first real test of how they are going to do that in a meaningful way. And I don't think that they figured that out yet. And I think the affordability question is the first stage of that, trying to create a plan absent of whatever Donald Trump says about it. And, you know, he's not doing them any favors by calling it an affordability hoax and things along those lines. But it's becoming more and more clear that they've gotta figure out how to do this on their own.
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C
Would you agree with that, Steve? That in fact, without the Tom Brady, the Donald Trump of it all, the numbers represent that Republicans cannot or have a harder time reaching voters?
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B
I mean, yeah, I think that the history of the Trump era kind of kind of speaks for itself if you just go through it, right? Like, 2016 is the first time he runs and he wins. And Republicans sort of down ballot in 16, you know, held up pretty well. And then what, what happened since then? 2017, off year elections. Virginia, New Jersey, disaster for Republicans. 2018, you know, Trump's not on the ballot. Midterm election, blue wave, you know, 2019, this was off year, off, off year elections. But Democrats even won the governorship of Kentucky in 2019. Trump not on the ballot. 2020, Trump loses, you know, for reelection, although I think exceeded expectations. And Republicans actually gained some House seats. Trump was on the ballot, you know, 2021, 2022, you know, Republicans were expecting the big Biden backlash midterm that didn't really materialize. Republicans made very small gains, enough to get control of the House, barely, but not the kind of gains they were hoping for. Trump not on the bat, you see. So Trump comes back on the ballot in 24. Republicans have a good year. So, yeah, I mean, I think the average Republican politician has been trying to figure this out for a decade now. And I think what they've kind of realized is Trump seems to have access to voters who the average Republican politician doesn't. And they have struggled to forge those bonds themselves. They've so far failed to. At the same time, those Republican politicians are still not sure what to do because they see that Trump alienates voters, that they think they can win themselves, and it's this balancing act that they just. The party has not figured out for a decade.
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C
It's a bit of a pickle.
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And conversely, yeah, the other end of that, too, not to belabor this point, is that while Republicans have a difficult time riding Donald Trump's coattails when he's not on the ballot, Democrats have no problem getting motivated by it. So the fact that Donald Trump is in office will be a motivating factor for Democratic voters, particularly Democratic base voters, in what will be a very crucial year.
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C
How much is kind of the loss of women within the Republican Party and Republican leadership ranks, Ryan, going to play into any of this? And what I mean by that is obviously the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of the world jumping ship and speaking, speaking out. Stefaniks, Mace, all of that with Speaker Johnson saying, no, no, I still have control, everybody.
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I think that the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives is going to go through a kind of an existential crisis here through the next year or so, I think that Speaker Johnson will likely be able to hold on to his speakership through the midterm elections. But unless he wins those midterm elections in a convincing fashion, it will be very difficult to see President Trump be willing to continue to prop him up in that position. Right now, he's holding on because Donald Trump is allowing him to hold on. But you're now seeing people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, like Nancy Mace, you saw these moderate Republicans that bucked him on the Affordable Care act, willing to speak out in a way that they weren't willing to do six months a year ago. And so unless there's a convincing Republican win, which we've already talked about, the prospects of that, I can't imagine that Donald Trump is gonna be willing to continue to spend his political capital on Mike Johnson. And when you consider the fact that Donald Trump may be a lame duck. There may not be Republicans that are necessarily gonna just be willing to roll over and do whatever Donald Trump tells them to. So there's no one who has more on the line over the next eight to 10 months than Mike Johnson. His entire political future is riding on this midterm election. He's gotta demonstrate some level of progress, or else there's going to be a huge, huge kind of uprising within the Republican ranks, particularly in the House of Representatives.
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C
If Republicans lose control of Congress. Ryan, how much will that hamper the president's efforts to get legislation across the finish line?
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A
Well, it's going to make it really difficult. And I think there's two ways that it can go. There's really three ways that it can go. There can be one, which is always a possibility, that Donald Trump wakes up and decides that he wants to be a deal maker because he's, you know, he's not ideologically driven by things. He's transactionally driven by things. And so there is. There is a universe, however unlikely it is, that he decides that he's gonna try and find a way to work with Democrats. That's the first, probably most unlikely. The second is that it becomes a borderline constitutional crisis where Democrats stand in the way of everything he wants to do. He tries to do it anyway through executive order or just by the sheer force of his own will, and we end up in court battles and gridlock the likes of which we've never seen. And then the third way is that Democrats become completely adversarial to the point where they are investigating and subpoenaing and doing everything they possibly can to stand in the way of his agenda. And that could be another impeachment situation. It could be, you know, members of his administration hauled before panels to answer questions in an open setting, which would be, you know, make any sort of serious legislating become impossible.
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C
So, for my last question, Kornacki, since it's almost 2026, I can't help but talk about 2028. How much can the results of 2026 predict? Where we could be headed for 2028? What does history tell us?
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B
Well, it's a. It's a mixed bag on that, right? I mean, look, when. When George W. Bush's second term went off the rail, things never recovered for Republicans. Between 2006 and 2008, it was just. It was almost like two waves happened. There was a Democratic wave in 06, the second Bush midterm, and then there was Barack Obama's pretty decisive election in 2008. You can even look at Obama's second term. The 2014 midterm for Obama went really badly for Democrats. And then two years later, Trump got elected president. But at the same time, it's also, as we say, it's the nature of midterm elections. It's almost always bad for the White House party. It doesn't always turn, you know, Bill Clinton had a terrible midterm in 1994, got reelected. So we've seen this too. So I think, to me, the midterm is in some ways, I think this is true. On the Democratic side, certainly it's about you're going to watch all of the potential prospects out there using it as an opportunity to sort of showcase their talents, campaigning for candidates next year. You're going to see the 28 field is going to be activated for the 26 candidates next year. And I'm curious on the Republican side, I think there's a very open question here of what that process is going to look like in 2028. Is Trump going to try to anoint like J.D. vance, his vice president, ahead of time and kind of head off a primary, or do we see more of a competitive process emerge?
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A
I think what we are starting to see little by little, and it is very subtle, but there are many people in the Republican Party who want to be president who are worried or maybe not worried, but are preparing for this idea that Donald Trump may anoint someone and are seemingly positioning themselves prepared to bucket. And the two names that I'll point you to are Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. Both of them have found very subtle, very calculated opportunities to break with Donald Trump without specifically saying they're breaking from Donald Trump. And I think they both are kind of leaning in, in a more aggressive posture on the whole populist message and are trying to separate themselves from areas where Donald Trump claims to be a populist but has become more of a corporatist. The prediction I would make is that even if Donald Trump attempts to anoint someone, we are going to see a competitive Republican primary. And I, and it's my firm belief today, you know, on, you know, whatever we are in December of 2025, that we are going to see the first legitimate all out open primary on both the Republican and Democratic side, as we've seen in presidential politics in a really long time.
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C
Ryan Nobles, Steve Kornacki. Happy New Year, guys.
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B
Happy New Year. Yes.
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A
Happy New Year. Yes.
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C
All right. That is going to do it for us at here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Bissugin. We are going to take a few days off and we'll be back in your feed on Friday with the episode. Rounding out our specials week, NBC News senior business correspondent Christine Romans joins us to break down the Alphabet soup of personal finance, which I think we can all use after the holiday spending spree. She explains why you don't have to go totally no spend no fun January to make a difference. And I gotta tell you, I even learned a lot in our conversation. So that's coming up on Friday. But for now and for 2025, see you later and happy New Year, everybody. Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it. Even in cold butter. Yup. Chocolate ice cream. Sure thing. Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be Tide.