← Next Up with Mark Halperin
Next Up with Mark Halperin
What's Really Behind Trump’s Greenland and Iran Strategy, and the Truth About the Economy, with Doug Sosnik
01:07:21
Mark Halperin kicks off today’s episode with a sweeping reported monologue on Donald Trump’s escalating pressure campaign over Greenland and what it reveals about his broader foreign policy theory of the case and about his unique decision making style. Mark lays out five fundamentals about the president and this international controversy, from Europe’s dependence on U.S. power and Trump’s obsession with leverage to the idea that markets, not Congress or NATO allies, may be the only real constraint on how far he goes. Mark then turns to Iran and the aftermath of the mass protests, breaking down why Trump’s decision not to strike was not a sign of weakness, but a calculated bet. He walks through the internal and allied pressure that shaped the decision, the risks of retaliation and regime consolidation, and why the story of Iran’s uprising may be closer to the beginning of the end than the end itself. Finally, Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik joins the show to explain what will ...
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Hey everybody, welcome back to NextUp. I am Mark Halpern. Thanks for joining. We'd love having all the Nexters back convened as we roll through January. I'm editor in chief of the live interactive video platform two Way and your host. Here to a guide to pretty much everything that's interesting. Me that's often politics. If you like politics, you're in the right place. If you don't like politics, you're in the right place too, because we're going to talk about interesting stuff today and throughout the new year. Grateful to have you here. Our guest is Doug Sosnik, longtime political advisor to President Clinton. He's one of the rare people who actually understand American politics. Clearly he knows the history, the data. We're going to preview the midterms and talk about what the Democratic Party needs to do. And Doug will also talk about where President Trump stands politically in terms of polling with the American people. Now, all of that to look forward to the midterms and then into 2028. Doug is as smart as they come. Really looking forward to having him back here. And then my reported monologue. I'm going to talk about President Trump and how to understand what's going on with Greenland. I've seen a lot of reporting and doesn't match necessarily the full portrait that I'm going to present to you. All of that coming here. Next up, don't go away. Hey, when you're snacking, have you ever taken a look at the nutrition label on any typical bag of chips? You'll find in there a chemical cocktail, things like seed oil, msg, artificial dyes, and vague references to natural flavors and ingredients that sound more like they come from a science experiment than something you would want to snack on. Masa is redefining snacking with real food. Their chips have just three ingredients, organic corn, sea salt and 100% grass fed beef tallow. 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Stop by and pick up a couple of bags before they're all gone. All right, so next up now, my reported monologue. I'm here on a regular basis to try to explain Donald Trump. I'm not here to defend him. I'm not here to attack him. There are tens of millions of people in America who love the guy and tens of millions who do not like him at all. And I feel like my job is to try to explain him. I've known him not well, but well enough for a long time. And that is part of my formal job is to report on Donald Trump and has been now for over a decade. It's an interesting story. As a journalist, he's a compelling character, and I think even the people who disdain him the most would have to acknowledge that this is a key story. But I also feel like there's a vacuum. If you read the media, talk to Trump supporters, talk to his detractors, I find you rarely get a clear sense of what he's like. And this Greenland fight, which is dominating not just the news but what's going on all this week in Davos with Europe and the United States really disagreeing. Part of the fight's about the president's announcement about new tariffs, but also his threat that he's going to take Greenland the easy way or the hard way. Markets around the world are rattled as I record this today. People are really concerned about the economic impact here, and European allies and American defenders of Europe are stunned. So what I'm going to try to do today is to take the reporting I've done since this began and match it up with the reporting I've done with Donald Trump over a decade this is a real thing. This is a real fight. This is not trolling by Donald Trump, although it is that too. It's not just trolling. And this is not going to go quietly away. Some of the people in the commentariat are saying that this is going to rip the NATO alliance apart, that the threats that the president, Vice President Vance, others in the administration and Trump allies have made against NATO, that it has to change, are nothing compared to this fight. And you are already seeing some remarkable things. NATO countries sending military force to Greenland, they say to show that they can defend it. But clearly it's meant to send a signal, the release of private communications between the president and NATO allies by both those allies and by the president himself. Scott Besant, the Treasury secretary in Davos, saying everybody needs to take a deep breath and kind of mocking Europe and warning them not to escalate things. People are saying on the left who don't like the president, who are very upset and you shouldn't, if you love what the president's doing and threatening Europe and threatening Denmark and Greenland, you should understand that a lot of your fellow Americans are very upset by this. And we've talked on two way and I've talked elsewhere to Trump supporters who do not like this. And the polls are clear. The polls are overwhelming. We talked about that last week. The polls are overwhelming. People don't want a military takeover and they're not that keen on some sort of forced takeover of what's happening. So the White House is not in a panic over this. And in fact, Bessant and the president both continue Rubio Secretary Rubio brimming with confidence while the markets have taken a hit. There's not, at least again as of today, a full off panic. But people are wondering about the NATO alliance and the New York Times is asking apocalyptically whether this could represent the end of the alliance as has been known to exist. Defending the West. NATO has been a valuable part of world security and American security for a long time. So there's no doubt that this is a serious thing. And there's no doubt that people are both cheering the president on in some quarters and rooting against him in others and angry at him in others. And the Europeans are divided. A lot of them are talking publicly and privately about trying to work something out, but they're worried that it won't work out and that this will be some sort of permanent rupture. So this is what I want to tell you, five points about where this actually is. The president knows the Europeans are upset but he wants Europe to change. And you saw this when he demanded in the first term that Europe pay their fair share regarding NATO. But you also saw in the vice president's speech at the beginning of the Trump administration, they look at old Europe as just that, as old, and that their failure to modernize their economies, their societies, their militaries, he looks at that as a reason to act, and he thinks it gives him room to act with impunity, that Europe is slow, that it's process obsessed, that it's afraid of using hard power. And when Scott Besant mocks Europe, as he did in Davos, for maybe they'll react by forming a working group. That's not an accident. That's meant to send a signal that what Trump and Besson and Rubio and Vance all believe is that Europe can't respond quickly, that Europe cannot escalate things quickly, and they've got nowhere to go but to deal with the United States. And the irony, from the point of view of many people around the president, who I've talked to, is that who played footsie with Putin and with China over the last decades, not the United States, more than European, Europe became reliant on Putin's oil and stayed reliant on Putin's oil even after he invaded Ukraine the first time, even after it was clear that he was a bad actor. They have established deep economic ties with Xi. You saw the Canadian Prime Minister meeting with Xi this week. Their view is, you know, the Team Trump speaking to Europe, you all have done nothing to check Putin, you've done nothing to check Xi. You're reliant on the United States, and yet you take the easy way out on economics by doing business with those two countries. And whether it's trade or energy or security or Ukraine, from Donald Trump's perspective, Europe needs to change. And while he's doing this effort to get Greenland on the merits, which we've discussed here, about security having a missile shield and about the shipping lanes and about the rare earth minerals, they also see this as an opportunity to try once again to get Europe to come into the modern world. And a lot of people in this country, a lot of the people in the national security establishment, they bristle at that. They want Europe to be, you know, considered an equal partner in this alliance. And. And that's just not how Team Trump thinks about it. All right, second point I want to talk about is I've been reading a lot of people who are against Donald Trump who say, this is it, this is different. Trump's Lost his mind. He's connecting the failure to get a Nobel Prize with his efforts to get Greenland and to not back down, and that somehow this is some new Trump, a worse Trump than we've ever seen. No, no, this is not a mental health plot twist. This is vintage Trump thinking about the old dictum, what's mine is mine, what yours will negotiate over. Thinking about real estate, biggest island in the world with a strategic location. So it's a, it's a big piece of real estate in a great place. And it's about leverage. And Trump is always about leverage. He's had the same set of instincts, the same priorities for 50 years. Using leverage, contempt for elite consensus, the same belief that people who go through the regular norms are suckers. Anybody who's shocked by this, anyone who thinks this represents some sort of breakdown or that this is the thing that people in Congress, Republicans in Congress and others should be reacting to, they just haven't been paying attention. This is not change for Trump. This is continuity. The media reaction, particularly for people who don't like Trump to say he's insane, he's destroying the left, he's a lunatic, he's a moron, just, it's just not different. Now, you may not, you may think all those things are true about Donald Trump, but he's acting exactly as behaved for 50 years. He wanted to take Greenland in the first term. For a variety of reasons, he backed down. But this is vintage Trump and nobody should say it's some new Trump. Okay, number three, there is a check on Trump here. It's not Europe, it's not the Republicans in Congress, it's not the people in the United States who want to stop him from proceeding to try to take Greenland. It's the markets. If the markets react really negatively to this, Trump will always react to markets and Scott Bessant, Marco Rubio, Dell will provide some sort of off ramp for him. So watch the markets in the US and around the world. That's going to be the tell if stocks plunge, if other markets take a hit, Trump will be ready, as he always is, to de, escalate, to negotiate. We're seeing meetings in Davos about this and, and, and the President will monitor it all. But if markets hold and the collapse, it's not a collapse, but it's just a small hit. Trump will continue the pressure, he'll continue to pressure new tariffs on Europe. He'll continue to be all for ambiguity, whether it's on truth, social or in interviews. Trump doesn't need to do this Quickly, he wants the optionality of getting the best deal possible. And that leads me to point 4. This is the biggest caution. There are people around Trump who worry that the threat could backfire, that in this case Trump may have miscalculated, that in seeking leverage, he might have actually made a positive deal less likely. This is almost certainly going to end with the deal and it's going to be a deal that doesn't involve the use of the American military, it doesn't involve a coercion of the, of the Danes, and the US Is going to get some sort of control, military control, economic control. The question is, is Trump going to end up with a worse deal than he could have had had he simply not engaged in these threats? Because the Europeans now will look like they are captive to the United States if they make a deal that's so favorable that it will appear to have been coerced. Some aides around Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal, are worried that the saber rattling continued. Trump's failure to take force off the table, which he did again on Monday night with NBC News, could harden resistance in Europe that the Europeans are taking him seriously, but they're also going to have to take their own credibility seriously. Pressure from Trump. We've seen this in the past. It works until it doesn't. And Europe now is offended and alarmed and getting publicly dug in. We've seen all week press releases and public statements from the European leaders saying Trump is not going to control Denmark and that may have raised the price. It may be that the president gets a deal eventually and everybody I knows saying they'll eventually be a deal, but he may be on a more narrow path. That's an open question. We'll see no, no shortage of confidence in most the administration, but some are worried that he's overplayed his hand here by making too many explicit threats that have really unsettled the Europeans. Okay, the last one, the last question is the price for the Greenlanders. We've talked about this here, we talked about it last week. I keep hearing that in the end, this is not going to be a decision for the Europeans, not for Denmark. Greenland and the people in Greenland are going to decide. And the Trump folks have already discussed this. Cash, mineral rights, infrastructure, long term guarantees, where the future for the folks in Greenland can be better than they currently have. So even though this will be discussed in Davos, this is not Davos focused. It's Greenlander Focus. If they can win over the Greenlanders, everything will change that. Right now they're A long way from there. We've seen protests in the last few days in Greenland, and the quotes continue to come out of there. What public opinion polling there is just like the Europeans are hardening against Trump, the Greenland might be, too. This is going to take retail politics on a geopolitical scale. It's going to take Trump convincing them that their lives would be better, but they're prepared to do that. The administration's prepared to do that. It's not going to take very much money to at least put on the table. But he might have overplayed his hand. We'll see. Finally, Trump has got a plan here, and this is the prism through which you should view all of Trump's decisions. You may not agree with the Trump theory of the case about what he wants to accomplish on foreign policy, but there is a theory of the case, and that is he wants to get leverage over China and Russia, whether that means beating them or maybe a tie. Maybe this sphere of influence concept where China and Russia stay out of this hemisphere and the United States after Trump's presidency, doesn't have to spend all of its resources fighting China and Russia. That's the goal is to. Is to find a change in the status quo because Trump's analysis is correct. The last American presidents before Trump did not change the status quo. So this is the key to Trump, and we talked about it here before, but it's so applicable to what's going on in Greenland. You cannot change the status quo with that risk. You cannot stick to the stasis and expect there to be change. But when you do change the status quo, you might see decline in some places. Trump's critics are saying now he's empowering Russia and China. Russia and China are loving this disunity with between the United States and NATO, and no doubt they do. No doubt this has been the goal of China and Russia forever divide NATO. But what Trump is saying is you got to go for a little bit of disunity to eventually get to the right place. It's a risk, but it's a theory. There's a strategy here. You got to not play it safe and let China and Russia win slowly. That's what's been happening through the Bush years, the Obama years, the Biden years, and to a large extent, the first Trump term. You cannot expect things to change. China and Russia have been on the march. China economically, Putin in Ukraine. Boldness at least provides an upside. That's what Trump believes. He wants those shipping lanes. He wants the control of the airspace for Missile defense. He wants the minerals. He doesn't want to have to listen to the Danes about what they say. And he wants hemispheric dominance. Trump's goal is to change the balance of power, to provide spheres of influence, to let the United States focus on economics and deals in the Middle east, in other parts of the world, without constantly having to worry about battling Putin, without having to battle xi. Trump could be reckless. His critics say he is. But the logic is consistent about where this goes. The logic is change things. Get a modern Europe as an ally, not an old Europe that is so weak from the point of view of Trump and Vance, on the economy, on the military, on culture. He wants a strong European partner to be able to deal with Europe so the United States isn't constantly having troops all over Europe, in Germany and elsewhere. Okay, Europe's rattled. They're rattled, but they're not going anywhere. They may say they're going to build up their defenses and build up their economies with that, the United States, but they need the United States. Trump knows that. Trump knows they need the United States military, they need the United States market, they need the United States influence around the world. So Europe is rattled, but they're constrained. Markets are nervous. Of course they're nervous. Big change. But Trump's hoping that switches back. Trump's watching it close. The west could be changed. The critics might be right, but that doesn't mean it's going to collapse. It doesn't mean Trump's crazy. It means that he's looking to change the status quo. Okay, that's what's happening with Greenland. This thing isn't over. We'll keep covering it. There's another story I want to talk about where Trump did something different. He took his foot off the accelerator, and that's Iran. Huge story. What's happened. The protests seem to now be over. And for those who want freedom for Iran, it's horrible because a lot of people died and the regime appears to still be in control. And Trump in some quarters, because he got to the precipice of doing some sort of military action and then didn't. Some quarters, people saying, well, that hesitation that equates with weakness, the kind of weakness that Trump has criticized Joe Biden and Barack Obama for dithering, indecisive, impotent. That is the reflexive characterization that you sometimes hear, that if you don't pull the trigger when you say you're going to, you failed. Okay. But in choosing not to act, Trump made a different kind of decision. He declined to Hit Iran. And while people in some quarters say that's a missed opportunity or a failure of nerve, there's an alternative for eating. And that's one that matters a lot. That's one about calibration. And it's one that, again, whether you like Trump or not, whether you think he made the right decision or not, it's about a different portrait of Trump than is normally out there, one that offers some evidence that Trump does listen to people, that he will recalculate, that he's not always an out of control bulldozer who just improvised, that Trump actually weighs what he hears behind the scenes. And Trump was under a lot of pressure to strike from some quarters, but also under more pressure not to from his own team, which had some concerns, and from foreign leaders. Okay. Vice President Vance said to be concerned about the impact of a strike. Wasn't clear that it would change the conditions on the ground. The Israelis, who are of course, often hawkish and no more anti Iran country in the world, they were said to have urged restraint because they weren't prepared to defend against an Iranian counterattack. They also felt that a strike may not have changed the regime. The Saudis, also no friends of the Iranians, they saw more downside than upside to a strike. Okay, Trump did the cost benefit analysis after he'd already leaned towards the strike and made preparations for a strike. He saw the upside there. Hit the Iranian infrastructure, reassert the concept of deterrence, exploit the weakness of the regime and signal support to the protesters that America was on their side. Those were all upsides that Trump was thinking about. But then he weighed it against the downside. And for many of his advisors and many American allies, the downsides were extensive retaliation by Iran, the possibility of reviving this notion of the great Satan narrative, that the regime, the Iranian regime, already saying this was an American operation, an American strike would have fostered that and give them more power and changed it from an organic revolution to one that could be blamed on outsiders. There was one hard truth again, that everybody agreed on. If it didn't topple the regime, what would the protesters do? Where would that lead the United States now in the wake of Trump's decision not to strike, where he said kind of elliptically that the Iranian government had agreed not to continue to kill people, what have we seen? The streets appear to be clear. The regime has basically won in the sense tactically, they've survived. The mass protests seem to be over for now. But survival does not equal stability. And Trump and his advisors know that the regime Can. Can repress people, they can kill people, they can engage in mass intimidation where thousands lose their lives and tens of thousands of jails, hospitals, turns into hunting grounds. All that can happen. But on the ground, this is a matter of time now, and Trump knows that. And for those who say he's always going to act rashly, the security forces now in Iran are an occupying army. The leaders there may have bought time, but they have not bought legitimacy. They have not bought loyalty of their people. They have not bought a bright future. Authoritarian regimes, you look at history, they don't fall when they're challenged. They fall when they are exposed as not representing the people. Those protests may have ended, but they weren't a failure. They were kind of a stress test for the Iranian government. They have barely survived this, and they were already in deep trouble. They've lost their influence in the Middle east as the proxies that have carried out their terrorism have really declined. The large protests now are ringing in the memory of the people in the country about a regime that is brittle and defensive and outdated. They've lost a lot of their nuclear capacity and their ability to scare people. Their core currency has been weakened. Millions showed they were not afraid to go out there. So what comes next year? Collapse may not be imminent. It probably isn't. The President knows that. But the clock is now ticking. The short term could be very ugly in the absence of an American strike. You could see more executions, more arrests, more control of the Internet. But this will end eventually. Could go on for months. It could even, sadly go on for years. But this will not last decades. Based on the analysis of people in this administration, these regimes don't fade away. They snap. They can look solid, and then all of a sudden, they don't look solid. In this administration, this regime in Iran, it doesn't look solid. Their ideology has been exposed. Their economy is now broken. They've lost the hearts and minds of the young people in the country. So even if the security forces there don't believe it, Donald Trump does. He's made a bet. He did not act the way he did in Venezuela. And as he often asked, as a day trader, a geopolitical day trader who moves quickly and takes big swings and expects immediate results. Here, Donald Trump, counter to the image and many, half of him, is playing a long game. He did not deny that failure to strike could be seen as weakness, but he rejected the use of force. He banked what happened. And that bank is something that the Iranian people can draw on, and he can draw on even After Venezuela, Donald Trump shows that even if he draws a line, it is not a sign of weakness, not a wimp fact or a taco problem. If Trump says he's locked and loaded and the adversaries believe him, and there's no doubt the Iranians did, then he doesn't need to fire to send a message. Okay, there will be another uprising eventually. Almost certainly the elites in Iran will continue to be worried. Economic collapse and catastrophic miscalculation is now going to be what this regime faces. The question is how soon it all happens. Trump's restraint, he believes, and his anal, his administration believes, didn't delay the day of reckoning for the Iranian regime. It may, in fact accelerated it. A strike could have set things back. And Trump decided, in the absence of clarity, to go with not striking. This is not the end of the story of the people of Iran rising up. It's the beginning of the end. And we'll see how long it takes to play out. But what we do know is Donald Trump will listen. Donald Trump will listen to the voices both at home and abroad amongst people telling him what they think he should do. And then, in this case, very different than Venezuela, he decided not to act, not to bull forward, but to show some patience. And he believes the long term, that will serve the cause of freedom in Iran better than a military strike would have. All right, there you have it. My reporting on Donald Trump's decisions to go forward with Greenland, but to pause in Iran, very consistent with the Trump that people who know him best can see. Love to know what you think about what I've talked about today. Send me an email. Next up, Halpern gmail.com would love to hear from you. Always. If you haven't subscribed to the program, we'd love you to take time to do it. You can watch us on YouTube. There are clips there as well as the whole program. Go to our YouTube channel and subscribe right now. Full episodes there, bonus content, and you always know you'll be ahead of the story. Our YouTube channel is YouTube.com@nextupalperin. You can also listen to the show as a podcast. Some of you do that as well. Turn on the downloads there. We want you to be able to get the show and all the clips as quickly as we post them. Your life is busy and we know it's hard to always remember. So if you subscribe, you'll always be informed when there's new content up there. Thank you for being nexters. All right, a quick break now. When we come back, the great political analyst Doug Sosnik will be here. Doug Sosnik is next stuff. Hey, are you being lied to right now? They tell you to max out your 401k, your IRA and then they make you beg for permission to use your own money. 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- [29:49]
B
All right, so let's put what's going on with the president and the country and the political context. Joining me now, next up, Doug Sosnik, longtime political adviser to President Clinton and other Democrats and truly one of the Democrats who you can trust to Be straightforward and honest and analytical about what's going on for the whole country, not just for his party. Doug, happy New Year. Welcome and thank you for coming back.
- [30:13]
E
Great be here. Thank you for having me.
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B
Mark, what matters right now, what's happening right now, Greenland, healthcare, State of the Union, Davos housing. What's happening right now that you think will matter when we get to the midterms in November?
- [30:29]
E
Well, I think what matters most collectively is how the country is feeling about Donald Trump as president, what his priorities are, how effective is he in pursuing those priorities. How do they feel about their life? How do they feel about their life based on their expectations when Trump ran and what are their expectations for the future?
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B
And how does he look right now on those metrics compared to other second term presidents facing their midterm?
- [31:02]
E
Well, in comparison to other presidents, he's sort of running neck and neck with his first term as being the lowest rated president in history. He did have a brief honeymoon when he got elected, at least relative to how he the approval ratings that he'd had since he really entered public life and ran for president. But beginning last June with the ice raids in LA and going through the summer and into the fall, he's kind of level back down to being a president with around, I would say somewhere in the low 40s job approval.
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B
Big debate on the question of economics between those who say that people are happy with the economy now because of tariffs, because of other parts of the current economy. And people say that this has been going on for many presidents over decades. Long term unhappiness with the general American decline, is it either or are they both a factor right now in weighing down the president's overall ratings and his ratings on the economy?
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E
It's both true. And by the way, so there were three polls that came out over the weekend to commemorate the first year of the Trump presidency. It was a CNN poll, the CNS poll, in the Wall Street Journal poll. And while the CNN poll I think had a little bit of a bias weighted to Democrats and the Wall Street Journal poll I think was a little bit too positive for President Trump, I think underneath all the data of the three polls is consistency. And the fact of the matter is is that overwhelming number of people don't feel that the economy is better. Over half think that inflation, regardless of the facts, they feel like inflation is running at a higher rate than their ability to keep up with pay increases. Trump has the lowest approval rating on his handling the economy since he ever ran or took office. And I think importantly and in the Wall Street Journal poll by around almost 20 points, the voters believe that this is now Trump's economy and not Biden's. And just blaming Biden at this point isn't going to work. The other part of your question, though, is true, which is that there's been since the beginning of the century, broad dissatisfaction with whoever's in power. Countries voted against change in 11 out of the last 13 elections. Trump was a terrific insurgency candidate. But now, as the incumbent with the Republican Congress, he's part of the status quo. So I think he's been weighted down by the sort of zeitgeist in America for the last 25 years, but also his stewardship and handling of the presidency in general, but particularly on the economy.
- [33:56]
B
I want to drill down on a few things you said, as my tech friends would say, double click on a few things. First is a parenthetical on polling. A lot of times a poll will come out and people will look at it and they'll say, well, this poll says the electorate's made up of X percent of Democrats, and that's way too high. Why do organizations release polls like that, where the number of typically with these media polls is over, sampling Democrats? Why do they do that when it's going to raise questions in people's minds about whether the poll is not just accurate, but on the up and up?
- [34:30]
E
Well, first of all, the Wall Street Journal poll did not oversample democrats. In fact, 40% of the people on their poll self identified as conservative. I think the issue about who to poll and how to wake the poll is much more complicated in a presidential election cycle in an off year in which fewer people vote. I think that the screen that you need to use is who is likely to vote because it is a much smaller pool of people. And I think that's less of a challenge for pollsters than in a presidential year with occasional voters.
- [35:10]
B
So, but again, if you were, if you were an advisor to CNN and they said our poll shows that the electorate's made up of this percentage of likely voters are going to be Democrats, and, and you look at the historical data and say that's just too high a number, should they go back and redo the poll or should they put it out with a caveat and not hide from it, or should they say, well, we, we think this is the right percentage of Democrats, even though that's off from what the historical norm would be?
- [35:35]
E
Well, I mean, you can also weight it. I mean, again, I think it's easier in a off year. Election because the fact is the matter now is that Democrats over perform in off year elections compared to presidential year elections. And the electorate in the last several elections is about plus 4% more educated. College educated voters are a higher percentage of the voters in an off year. 4 point more 4% more of the electorate are college educated in off years than on years. And seniors are also the group most likely to vote. So I think that by weighting the polls based on the is a rather consistent pattern of off year elections. I don't think it's that. I don't think it's that difficult. I think it's quite difficult to figure that out in a presidential election cycle in general. And it's particularly been difficult to figure out that when Donald Trump is a candidate, we've had in the last two presidential elections, two of the highest turnout elections in the last hundred years. But the fact is, is that almost one out of three people in America didn't vote in these elections. So I think it's really complicated and difficult to figure out who's going to vote in presidential elections, particularly when you have someone like Donald Trump who's able to bring out people to vote who haven't voted in the past. I think it's less complicated in a presidential year, not in an off year. And I'll say in the CNN poll, which I do think overstates Trump's weaknesses a little bit, they've got, I think Democrats right now are like 18 points, 16 or 18 points more enthusiastic about voting. I think it's 76 to 60 more enthusiastic about voting right now than Republicans.
- [37:23]
B
Would that be normal if that were true for a midterm for the out party to be that much more enthusiastic?
- [37:29]
E
Well, I mean there's generally more energy in this country when you're against something than when you're for it. And I think there's some real red flags. I'm speaking as a Democrat. I think there's some caveats I have to put into what I'm getting ready to say. But you know, if you just look at the historical data on the favorability of in general the job approval of the incumbent party and president, in this case, Republicans control everything. If you look not only at the favorability of the sitting president, but I think probably more importantly in an off year, the very unfavorability, which is 49% now in those three polls, 48, 49% are very unfavorable towards Trump, which is about double the, the very favorable view of Trump. If you look at Trump, Trump's job approval in general, but particularly on these issues. The generic vote, which is right now about plus four for Democrats and the enthusiasm, you would look at that and expect to have a blue wave election. I think there are reasons why the Republicans are less vulnerable this year than the data would suggest. And as a Democrat, I'm far more confident in what the political environment is going to be like in November than I am about our ability to overcome the structural impediments we face.
- [38:53]
B
So talk about the structural impediments first in the House. What are the structural impediments?
- [38:58]
E
Well, it's, you know, so one of the things I believe is Donald Trump is a reaction or a symptom of what's going on in America. He's not the cause. And there's been a movement building since the early 1990s with Ross Perot's candidacy that in a sense, Trump got in front of the line and took through his election in 16 and his presidency. We now have a realignment in American politics. The single best predictor of how someone's going to vote is their level of education. So whereas, Mark, when you and I were starting off in politics, the coin of the realm was all politics was local. Now all politics is national. So how you vote for president, it's how you vote for the Senate, it's how you vote for the House, it's how you vote for local offices and state legislatures. So the Democratic challenge with the decline that we've suffered with non college voters, which constitute almost 60% of all Americans, is that races now have been nationalized where there aren't that many competitive seats. And so as a result of that, there's a lot of places in the past that we would be competitive in a kind of a blue wave election that we don't have now. I'll just tell you quickly before we redistricting in the House, There are only 16 congressional districts that have a different member party from the presidential candidate who carried their state. There are 88 senators of the same party as the president who carried their states. There are 38 states right now that are controlled completely by one political party. So this nationalization of our politics has created fewer opportunities for Democrats in a blue wave election.
- [40:43]
B
So the wave has to be even bigger to overcome the sorting that's occurred. What's the connection between that and the importance of someone's education, whether they've got a college degree or not?
- [40:54]
E
What's that education is, it's, it's not pure. And there are a lot of other factors But I think education is linked to two things. One is there's a correlation. The higher education level you have, the higher not only of your income, but wealth accumulation. There were 206 counties that voted for Obama in 08 and Obama in 12 that voted for Trump in 16. And 197 of those counties Trump carried in 2024, they were disproportionately areas of the country that have been left behind by a transition from a manufacturing and industrial economy to 21st century digital and global one. And these counties were disproportionately comprised of older, non college voters. The first reason for that are this economic correlation of education. But the second is a cultural divide. What a lot of Democrats can't understand is why Biden, for instance, did so much for the auto industry in Michigan and why didn't autoworkers support him in the campaign? And the answer was that Trump had a cultural connection and affinity with those folks. Again, correlated to education levels. And for a lot of working class people in America, they think the Democratic Party has become a party of elites and that we look down on them. And if people think you're looking down on them, it's pretty hard to get their vote.
- [42:21]
B
What do you agree with the conventional wisdom that the most likely outcome in the midterms is the Democrats take control of the House, but the Republicans retain control of the Senate?
- [42:31]
E
I think that's probably the most likely scenario. And I guess sometimes even the conventional wisdom is accurate. But just to give you a sense of what the Democrats are up against. So in 2025, Democrats won every statewide election in the country, including three judgeships statewide in Pennsylvania, first time since 2006, two statewide elections in Georgia picked up, I think like 13 or 14% of all Republican held state legislative seats that were on the ballot. And Democrats in 2025 overperformed by 14 points compared to 2024. Now, if Democrats in 2026 overperform by 14% like we did in 2025, there will be 48 Republican members of the House that will be vulnerable to lose. They're currently, if you look at the Cook Report, There are only 18 seats right now that Republicans hold that are considered vulnerable. And so we have to expand the map. And in the Senate, we need to pick up a four seats to take back the Senate. That's going to require us not only our holding some very competitive races in Michigan and Georgia, And I think we have a pretty good chance of winning in Maine and North Carolina, which are Republican seats. But even if we do that we're two seats short. And so then our only ability to take the Senate back is to win two additional seats out of four states. Texas, Ohio, Alaska and Iowa, where Trump won by 8 points or more in 2024 in all these states he carried in the last three elections. So it just shows you structurally how challenging it is for Democrats. And just the last thing I'll say is, is, you know, back when I was in the White house in, in 94, Trump had a 45%, I'm sorry, Clinton had 40, 46% job approval on Election Day in 1994, 46%. And we lost 54 House seats and eight Senate seats. And in 2010, when Obama had a 45% job approval in 2010, which again is three or four points higher than Trump currently, the Democrats lost 63 House seats and seven Senate seats. So it's this realignment that's put this lower ceiling on Democrats. Opportunity to fully take advantage of what appears to me to be the kind of workings of a blue wave, besides.
- [45:16]
B
How voters are feeling about the economy and how the economy is doing. And those are not. Every president I've ever covered would tell you they're not as correlated as they should be in their view. Not what polling data would you be most interested in knowing, but what real world events between now and the midterms would you be most interested in knowing to understand how well Democrats could do on Election Day?
- [45:41]
E
Well, I think one of the several things I would do, first of all, in terms of the, the environment on Election Day, I think it'll be set by the summer usually is one of the things that I became really fully aware of in my six years of working in the White House is first of all, how hard it is to make changes, and secondly, how hard it is to make change and for people to feel it. And so I think the clock is ticking for Trump right now and the Republicans to change what is really a consistently negative view about the economy in our country. And it doesn't help when Trump, first of all, doesn't talk about it very much. And secondly, when he does, he talks about being a hoax or a fraud. So I'm going to be looking to see whether these economic trends improve in the next four or five months. You know, in 92, when, when Bush ran for reelection, actually the, we had, we had a recession, but it ended in, in June or July of 92. And in fact, on the run up to Election Day, things were really improving in the country. It was too late for Bush in 92. So the first thing I'm going to look at is that the second thing I'm going to look at is how Republicans are going to react to Trump and whether they're going to put more distance between them. I don't think in any scenario you're going to see Republicans en masse walking away from the president. He enjoys around a 90% job approval with Republicans right now. But you are seeing the signs of some, some separation on some Republicans because I think increasingly Trump's self interest is not as neatly aligned as it has been with Republicans. Self interest and the two places, and again, with very narrow margins in the House and Senate, one or two people really matter. But you look at members of the Republican members who have announced their retirement, Congressman Bacon in Nebraska, Senator Tillis in North Carolina, for instance. And I think increasingly, as you see these filing deadlines close and Republicans who are overwhelmingly in safe seats are no longer, you know, risking a threat of a primary, I think you'll see more distance from Trump. Again, I don't think you're going to see it in Mass, but it doesn't take a lot. So I'm going to be looking to see whether or not more Republicans are more willing to be outspoken against the president than they have been.
- [48:14]
B
All right, we're going to take a quick break. Next up with Doug Sizer, we're going to talk about the Democratic Party's image in the midterms and then beyond. That's next up. Look, real New Year's resolutions aren't hashtags. They're about deciding to be sharper, more effective and more in control. Beam is a company proudly founded in America, run by people who share our values. And they build products that help you keep the promises you make to yourself. Promises that actually matter. Their best selling Dream Powder is a healthy nighttime blend packed with proven ingredients shown to improve sleep so you can wake up refreshed and ready to take on the day. Dream is made with a powerful blend of all natural ingredients like Reishi, magnesium, L theanine, apigenine and melatonin. It's designed to help you fall asleep, stay asleep and wake up feeling amazing without any of that next day fog. The chocolate peanut butter flavor, it's legit tasty. Like a guilt free hot cocoa, Dream is made right here in America. No shortcuts, no junk. Founders who value hard work and results. Beam's already improved over 28 million nights of sleep. So if you've been waiting for the right time to try Dream, this is the time. Go to shopbeam.com, use code mark for up to 40% off again, that's just $39. With code mark $1.25 a night again shop beam.com, go there today. All right, we're back with Doug Sosnik. Working class, being a working class party is something that politically advantaged Democrats enjoyed for a long time. That has slipped. It's correlated to some extent. As you mentioned earlier, though, education question has become predominant over other factors, race and income, et cetera. But what does the Democratic Party need to do to become the party of the working class again? Is it about a charismatic leader running for president? Is it about issues? Is it about the way they talk or how they spend their time? What are the building blocks to the Democratic Party doing better than it's done in the age of Trump with working class voters of all races?
- [50:23]
E
Well, I mean, the only thing that's really been working for Democrats with working class voters recently is the failure of the Trump administration to really improve their lives. And you know, unlike in the past, if you look at the counties in America that are most dependent on federal aid for their income, which is 25% more of their aid, over 75% of the counties in America right now that are most dependent on federal aid voted Republican. So the impact of either these government cuts, the Doge cuts, which haven't been fully felt, I think it's going to be a bit of a waiting on the Republicans, which in the short term can accrue to the Democrats. I mean, I, I, I think, though, realistically, to answer your question, the only way the Democrats are ever going to fix their image problem is who we run for president. Candidates define parties, not the federal wing, for instance, of a congressional wing of the party. So the best thing that Democrats can do now in Washington and Congress and the DNC is to try to make the Democratic brand less toxic for the nominee who runs in 2028. That's all that we can do and not talk about social issues which were on the wrong side of 20 to 80 and try to have an agenda for the working class people of America where they can actually have a middle class life in the future, not only a job, but a career path. And that really should be our challenge. So I think if you look at the Wall Street Journal poll that just came out, both parties are very unpopular. The Republican Party is still around 8 or 9 points more popular than the Democrats. The Democratic favorability has improved, but it's really very, it's still very much towards the bottom where it's been historically. So I think the most we can do as a party right now is to try to make ourselves less toxic and less of a wait for our eventual nominee.
- [52:34]
B
Talk about Ronald Reagan's three legged stool. National security, social issues, economics. One of the things the Trump machine, the MAGA machine, social media, et cetera is in the present bully pulpit. They seem very good at finding issues within all three of those realms where Democrats are on the wrong side and really putting those things front and center. Is Democrats path back to being seen as a working class party to improving the Democratic brand. Does it involve competing in all three of those realms? National security, social issues and economics or trying to downplay one or the other and focus on economics? Clearly economics has got to be part of it. But what about national security and social issues? Are those areas where Democrats need to stay quiet because they're so divided or try to formulate positions and emphasize positions that are more popular with the public at large?
- [53:26]
E
Well to be clear that what you just said about the right wing issues and all, I think what was effective in the playbook when Trump was a candidate and pulling out people who hadn't voted before. Yeah, but I think you know when I think there's going to be a big challenge for Republicans in 26 which is that they've never successfully been able to pull out these voters when Trump is not on the ballot. And you saw in Virginia last year in the governor's race that they, they almost exclusively relied on these issues to try to pull out that Republican vote. But those voters just don't come out when Trump is not on the ballot. And Democrats not only took the governorship back but had the highest number of victories in the state legislature since any time since the 1980s. So going to your three legged stool, I think with the exception of 2004 in the aftermath of 9 11, that was the only election I think since World War II where national security and global issues drove the outcome of the election. All elections I think are about people's security, their economic security and their personal security. As a former campaign manager I recognize there are issues that we can lose on my candidate and issues we can win on. So the goal then is to neutralize the issues you can lose on so that you can focus on the issues that you can win on. For me we should not be talking about and focusing on social issues. We should try to neutralize that to get close enough to a draw that we don't lose on it. And then everything I think should be about economic issues is the Wing of.
- [55:17]
B
The party represented by Bernie Sanders and aoc. They want single payer health care, increased taxes on the wealthiest and more government regulation of the private sector. Is that a helpful part of a Democratic message or is that part of what keeps Democrats from being seen as popular and relatable and trusted on economics?
- [55:41]
E
Well, I wrote an article for Politico, I think around 12 years ago called which side of the barricades are you on? And the point of the article was that the old lines and divisions no longer applied. So on the one side of the barricades that I wrote about them, which I think holds up, are the globalists, the Romneys of the world, the Clintons of the world, and on the other side of the barricades are the people working on behalf of the masses. And so that's Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul. And I think you've seen Trump in the last three, two, three months. He recognizes that there's a lot of similarities between populist left and populist right on economic issues. When Mandavi came to the Oval Office and they had their meeting and they talked about commonality on a lot of issues last week, Trump called Elizabeth Warren, of all people and talked about issues, positions they shared on in banking. I think it shows you that the energy in America right now is on the popul is populism and that transcends the old lines that have been drawn between Democrats and Republicans and, and also.
- [56:46]
B
Make some people on the left, the Democratic Party really seem like more like populists than, as progressives are too far to the left.
- [56:53]
E
You know, I think you take my, I think the, the, you know, if you think. Let me make one specific point, then I make a general point. I don't think the results of 2016, 2026 are going to tell you anything about what's going to happen in 2028. And I think that we, we as Democrats have a tremendous sets of advantages in a midterm that are actually our weaknesses in a presidential election. And I think that one of the lessons that we should take, all of us in politics should take, is Mondani's victory. And people ascribe his victory to a vote for socialism. And I think that is at best the third reason he won. I think the first reason he won was he was the candidate of change. He was the candidate of breaking things. And I don't think any candidate can run for president and be successful if they're defending the status quo. The second thing that I think drove his victory was a vote for generational change of leadership in our country, particularly for Democrats. But the country in general is dying for a new generation of leadership. And so I think being on the right side of change and I think, you know, a new generation of leadership coupled with as part of this being for change is trying to create an economic system in which we get more people to benefit from or from it rather than the rich and powerful who are perceived by both parties, both activists of both parties of setting a system up that's rigged.
- [58:31]
B
You've nodded to 20, 28 a couple times. So let me put up my latest eight for 28. Eight Democrats, my reporting says, are the most likely to be the nominee. And arguably this is a list certainly a lot of younger people. Not everybody on this list is as Young as a AOC, but a younger group, there's no, there's no 70 or 80 year olds on this list. And most of them are outsiders. The vice president, United States could still argue to be an outsider. Former Vice President Harris Rahm Emanuel, you know, well, has served in Washington, but also, you know, was a mayor of Chicago, doesn't live in Washington now. So first, let me ask you again for those listening on the podcast, I don't recall Gavin Newsom, number one, these are the most likely to be the Democratic nominee. Nothing about the general electionaire. Newsom 1. Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania 2. Kamala Harris 3. J.B. pritzker, Illinois governor 4. Pete Buttigieg, 5. AOC 6. Ronna 7. Rahm Emanuel, 8. First, what's your general reaction to this? Who would you move up and who would you move down in terms of likelihood to be the nominee?
- [59:38]
E
Well, as you know, Mark, I'm not big fan of spending too much time right now looking so far in the future. I think your list right now in general, but also in the order that you have it is probably is a good list. And probably if I had to put my own list together, I would be very close to that. I would just want to mention a couple of things.
- [59:58]
B
Yes, sir.
- [59:59]
E
First of all, we this is the I think it's today or yesterday. It's the one year completion of the first year of the Trump presidency. So whether you like Trump or don't like Trump, we're at the quarter poll. So there's a lot more road ahead of Trump as president than what we've seen. And generally when we as a country change presidents, for every action there's a reaction. And so we often as a country are looking for the opposite of what we've had when we elect A president. If you look at the one word that Trump ran on in 16, it was strength. And that was his anecdote to what he believed to be Obama's weakness as president. And Obama, you know, single word was changed in 08, which is a reflection, you know, trying to run on, you know, the period after the Bush presidency in general, particularly the Iraq war. So this. So I don't know where the country, what the country is going to feel like three years from now into Trump's second term when they start voting. But I will say, say this I thought was the best sort of summation of where the country feels today. The CBS poll asked respondents, how are you feeling after the first year of the Trump presidency? The Top rated response, 54%, was uneasy. The second rated was 51%, frustrated. The third rated was 47%, which was unsafe. And the fourth one, which I think will be the Most important one three years from now, 42% said they were exhausted. So that, to me, is what's going to be worth watching, because the job description when the primaries start in 2028 is going to be driven in large part to people's reaction to the prior three years of Trump as president.
- [61:58]
B
So you're right. We can't know exactly what it will look like. But from today, it seems like what you're saying, and I think most people would say is one trait that the Democratic nominee should have is to be an outsider as opposed to an insider. Would you agree with that? That matches the mood of the country, right?
- [62:14]
E
Yes.
- [62:15]
B
Would you want someone who was younger? Would that likely be a good. The right contrast for.
- [62:21]
E
I would want someone who's not old.
- [62:23]
B
Yeah. So young as opposed to old, outsider as opposed to insider. What other traits. If you were building a Frankenstein candidate, what other traits do you think are likely to be attractive to the electorate for the general election in 2028 for Democrats?
- [62:39]
E
Well, they have to be on the right side of change. And I think they have to have. I think they have to have a. You know, one of the things that people underestimate is how hard it is to run for president. And only the people that have figured out why they're running, being able to articulate what they would do if they're elected president and whether people feel like what they're saying is authentic and then whether or not they think they can actually get it done, those are the tests. And so to me, what's most important right now, and we saw this with Clinton in 91, where he got his voice by the end of the year from 92. We saw with Obama in 07, the end of the year when he got his voice For 2008, Trump really had his voice from the moment he announced in 15. If you look at a Clinton speech deep into his presidency, an Obama speech deep into his presidency, or a Trump speech this week, and you go back to when they got their voices, in the case of Clinton, it was, it was 91. And for Obama 7 and Trump in 15, it's the, the act, the architecture, architecture and the scaffolding is the same. So having a reason for running, being articulate why you're running, but having people believe that you actually are authentic and not just another politician, those are gating issues. Then you have to prove through the primaries that you have the temperament to take the pressure.
- [64:10]
B
If you look at J.D. vance now, again, he may not run, may be challenged and lose the nomination, but if you think about him now looking at his political skills, his political political identity, his association with the administration which he serves, does he seem like George Bush did to many Democrats at this point in the cycle, in the 2000 cycle as a formidable general election candidate, a weak general election candidate, or just too soon to say how he would fare?
- [64:35]
E
Well, I think that there will be a MAGA candidate and a non MAGA candidate. It looks like Vance is well positioned to become the MAGA candidate and I think Ted Cruz is the most likely Republican to run. That will be the non MAGA candidate. There was an NBC poll that came out at the end of last year in December which asked Republicans whether they self described as being MAGA or Republican or part of the Republican Party. That poll had a 50, 50 Republican self identification as MAGA, non MAGA, which I think was about a 14 point decline for MAGA.
- [65:18]
B
Yeah.
- [65:18]
E
Over that time. So I think you'll have a primary of the MAGA candidate and the non MAGA candidate. The MAGA wing of the party is going to control the machinery of the Republican primary. They'll be able to establish the rules, the order, they'll have a tremendous amount of money. But, but the, you know, we Democrats, we. So there, there in my lifetime there have been three people who ran for president whose campaign turned from a campaign to a movement. And a movement is way bigger than a campaign. So Ronald Reagan was the first and that movement really endured, I think all the way through until the 2008 election that Obama won and it ended in the Republican Party after Romney's defeat in 2012. That was the end of the political project that Reagan started. Then Obama had a campaign that turned into a movement, but I think within a couple years, Obama turned into another candidate, not a movement person, and Trump was a movement candidate. That's still a movement candidate. But what you've learned in the case of Obama, and so far, at least in political elections, it's the case with Trump, that these movements are dominated by attraction to an individual and they're not transferable, and they're like at least six wings of the MAGA movement, which actually not only don't have things in common with each other, but actually opposed to each other on some issues. And so Trump was able to transcend that, those differences. But Vance, it's going to be much more difficult for him to do that. So, again, what I said about the Democrats applies to Republicans, which is to say I don't really know how formidable he'll be, but I do think he'll be in a position to be consolidated as the heir to Trump. But I think that the whole notion of Trumpism is more personal than it is an ideological, intellectual movement.
- [67:24]
B
Doug, if people want to follow your work, where can they look?
- [67:28]
E
Well, I don't know. I don't do a very good job of.
- [67:30]
B
You do a horrible job. You do the worst job of anybody I know.
- [67:33]
E
Yeah, well, I do write things regularly. They often get put in Politico or Mark, you run them. So I guess you can Google me. I. I largely. I don't do social media. I largely feel like I just want to think about what I'm thinking about and I put it on paper and I let it go out there and people can do what they want with it.
- [67:54]
B
Yep. Doug does memos every so often with charts and historical data and analysis are as good as any. Anything you can read between now and the midterms. And as he said, you can find his stuff often in political. I'll have one.
- [68:05]
E
Mark, I'll send you at the end of the week.
- [68:07]
B
Yeah. So you can look for it in my substack and elsewhere, Doug Sosik, a Democratic strategist and a thinker about America in a. In a way that is, even though he's a partisan, is neutral. Doug, very grateful to you for coming back on and look forward to talking to you as the year goes forward.
- [68:21]
E
Great. Thank you for having me, Mark.
- [68:22]
B
All right, that's it for today's program. Thursday, a brand new episode drops. You can always get our episodes on YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast, but please go there and subscribe. Like, share them all. We want to continue to grow the legion of nexters from coast to coast and beyond. So listen to the program and we'll see you on Thursday. So you always know what's coming next up.