This is a lightly edited transcript of the December 11 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
Perry Bacon: I’m joined this morning by my great colleague Grace Segers, and we’re going to talk about the year in politics on some level. We’re going to hit a few broad subjects. So, Grace, welcome.
Grace Segers: Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
Bacon: I want to start with kind of the big question—for me, at least—which is that Donald Trump wins a second term a little over a year ago. He wins almost 50 percent of the vote; he wins a plurality for the first time. He makes gains with young voters, Latinos, Asian Americans. He wins basically every swing state. So we have a lot of discussion about politics having changed in America—realignment, et cetera, et cetera.
So now we’re at a point where his approval rating has gone down from about 50 percent in early January to about 40 percent now. So my question for you is: Was that inevitable because he was unpopular? Or maybe because the country is always permanently in a backlash against whoever is president? Or do you think he could have been more popular but governed in the same way he did last time, guaranteeing that he’d be unpopular?
Segers: I think the answer’s probably an annoying answer, because you ask a yes or no question and the answer is both. Because I do think Trump has forgotten what Biden forgot and what every president seems to forget: that people blame the president for what’s happening. They don’t pay attention to the nuances or margins or the rules of congressional politics. They think, Who’s in the White House? Who’s controlling Congress? Trump is in the White House, and yet my prices are still up. I voted for him because my prices were up, so now I’m mad at him. And I think just the... every president forgets that people blame who the president is. So I think part of that is just: This was inevitable. At the same time...
Bacon: Unless prices have dramatically dropped or something that he probably doesn’t have a ton of control over?
Segers: But at the same time, he has made choices like implementing tariffs, which have contributed to an increase in prices. His plan—and the reason that people voted for him—was because they were mad about inflation, and he’s made decisions that have increased inflation. I saw that the Republican Congress passed legislation that will implement dramatic cuts to federal spending, and also Trump slashed the government size. But we’re not going to see the impact of those for, I would say, the next couple of years.
Bacon: So both? You think he made some mistakes and that this was probably—unless something changes—just the inevitable outcome? I mean, are voters perpetually unhappy? Is that what you’re getting at—that they blame the president for things that he or she cannot control?
Segers: I do think that is largely the case. And you see it on both sides of the aisle, but one example that’s coming to me right now is a lot of young progressives were really mad at Biden because their student loans weren’t forgiven to the degree that they wanted. They didn’t care that the Supreme Court is the one that overturned that. And they didn’t care that the Biden administration did forgive a lot of student loans. If it didn’t affect them directly, they thought, He promised this; it’s not happening.
And I think people don’t care about the 60-vote filibuster threshold. They don’t care about what the Supreme Court does when it comes to overturning or upholding a president’s policies. And I know I’m sounding really cynical about voters and about their capacity to appreciate the political nuances, but I am kind of cynical about voters and their capacity to appreciate political nuances.
Bacon: It’s important to note that politicians cannot be critical of voters, but we are not politicians. So let’s zoom in on the Democrats. So at the beginning of the year: Democrats in disarray, what do they do? Party divided, [then at the end] of the year? Huge wins in Virginia and New Jersey. And also the other elections happened last month, and the Democrats did well in Georgia, and they won a lot of races. In the election in Nashville, Democrats do really well. They don’t win, but they do well in Memphis. So was that also inevitable because there’s a backlash to Trump coming, or have Democrats figured out something?
Segers: I think it is a lot easier to be in the minority than it is to be in the majority. I think Republicans especially are very good at being the minority party. But I mean, as Democrats knew the first time around, when Trump gets in office, he’s unpopular. And that’s why you saw such massive gains in 2017 and 2018—because they had this concrete figure doing unpopular policies.
And then again, that’s why you see the reverse when Biden was in office. And I think partially it is just a pendulum swing, but you can’t entirely attribute it to structural factors. I do think that Democrats have gotten better at sort of cohering under a message. And you’ve seen really successful Democrats from as different as Abigail Spanberger to Zohran Mamdani talking about affordability and that being really successful.
I absolutely hate quoting James Carville, but he did go off with, “It’s the economy, stupid.” And so you can’t entirely say, “Well, this is how it goes; the minority will always do better against an unpopular president,” but I do think that is an important factor there.
Bacon: Do we have to say—in all criticism of Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries throughout the year—that if their goal is to weaken the incumbent president and oppose him, and his numbers have gone down, we have to say they are not as dumb as people on the left say they are?
Segers: They have a thankless task. Every leader who is trying to hold onto their majority or gain the majority has to hold together a lot of disparate moving parts, especially in an increasingly dysfunctional Congress. Thus far this century, the most successful speaker of the House we’ve seen has been Nancy Pelosi, and the most successful Senate majority leader we’ve seen has been Mitch McConnell.
And I think that both of them were really good at not caring at all what people thought of them. And they didn’t care if their own members completely hated them, as long as they voted for them for the majority leader vote. And I think that Schumer and Jeffries are a touch too concerned about what their members say about them. And part of it is just they don’t have the iron grip that McConnell and Pelosi had. But you know, I mean, they don’t have a great job, and you can say that they have made mistakes, because they have.
Bacon: I’m saying that they’re doing a pretty good job—that Trump’s getting more. I’m saying the opposite: I’m asking whether they’re not getting enough credit.
Segers: I wouldn’t go that far either.
Bacon: What about Thune and Mike Johnson? Is the idea that they are under Trump’s thumb, and so we don’t really have much independence? Because it feels like the House Republicans are complaining about Mike Johnson more and more. Now, I can’t tell if that’s a proxy for Trump or if he is not—I don’t follow him as carefully, I’ll be honest. So I’m just curious what you have to say about Mike Johnson and John Thune.
Segers: I do think Mike Johnson has a particularly weak grasp on his conference. And so I think a big part of that is just his members are a lot more recalcitrant than members have been in the past. They want to be on TV; they want to be “Hell no.” And he was part of that, right? When he came to Congress, he was one of those members, and now he is leading them. He’s been weak for years. But you haven’t seen anyone to replace him because no one wants the job. Because it’s a horrible job. Because...
Bacon: He shouldn’t have got the job in this weird way in the first place,
Segers: Yes, exactly. I mean, I was there for 15 rounds of votes. I sat through all of those stupid speaker votes. It was miserable. However long it took—it took a week or whatever—it’s just such an awful process that I don’t think anyone wants to do it. But at the same time, that won’t stop them from complaining about him. And I do think he is historically weak compared to some previous speakers.
Bacon: Or just someone who really had more experience.
Segers: Right. And he very much is doing what Trump wants him to do. Thune, I think, is very well liked in his conference. He always has been. It’s why he became majority leader. He’s been McConnell’s understudy for years. And I think he has a healthy understanding of what makes the Senate unique, and thus far has really kept to Senate procedure.
I don’t actually think he has been tested dramatically yet. I don’t think there really has been something where people have said, Oh, we need to get rid of the filibuster, because for the most part, senators understand: If we get rid of the filibuster, the next time we’re in the minority, we’re kind of screwed. But if in the next election, in ’26, you saw a bunch more firebrand conservatives elected, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. I think he’d be in a lot more trouble.
Bacon: So we had this interesting government shutdown. I’m curious what you made of this. The first point is that the people—and I—we’re talking about politics a lot, but I think the most important point to make is that in terms of policy, a lot of Americans lost, because the system needed to figure out how to not increase their health care premiums, and the government in Washington, which is Republicans right now, did not do anything about that. So people’s premiums have skyrocketed, and that is a horrible thing.
So it was also a political thing, too, though. On some level, I’m curious: on the one hand, the Republicans blocked Obamacare subsidies, which they oppose, I guess, and so in this sense they won that. But in another way, Trump’s polling numbers appear to have gone down in that period. The Democrats—I can’t tell that they lost the policy, but maybe they won the politics. What’s your assessment of what happened, agreeing that the government shutdown did not have the policy results it should have? What was the political impact?
Segers: I always think that a government shutdown—as you say, it’s a policy loser for everybody—but I also have this maybe hot take that it’s a political loser for everybody. As we’ve previously discussed, I do think whoever is the party in control ultimately gets blamed. But the reason that everybody loses on a political front is that people hate Congress.
Bacon: Yes, they have hated Congress for decades. People in both parties are saying this.
Segers: One of the few things Americans of all parties, beliefs, creeds, whatever can agree on is that they hate Congress. They think they’re useless, think they can’t get anything done—and I mean, they can’t.
Essentially, there’s good reason to believe that. And it’s not like Democrats are coming out of this with sky-high polling rates. They’re still polling very poorly, including among Democrats.
And I think that is just why a government shutdown is always going to be a political loser, because you have proved once again that you are literally so dysfunctional you cannot keep the government open. In what other country does that happen? What other democracy? So I think everyone loses from that one.
Bacon: So anything surprise you about this year—just thinking about the year in politics? I mean, I probably did expect Trump to be fairly unpopular because I didn’t expect him to govern much differently. I think the party of the president is always in a big predicament, so that part’s not surprising.
The Democrats don’t have much of a message but are benefiting from Trump being unpopular—or the Democrats have a message but are benefiting from Trump being in the White House. That’s not surprising to me. But I’m curious what you would say first: anything surprising this year?
Segers: It’s going to be a really boring and wonky answer. So I really enjoy tax policy. Okay. And I’ve been sort of on the side covering tax policy, specifically as related to families, for several years now. And the Child Tax Credit in particular has always interested me. As all tax nerds knew, at the end of 2025, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—the TCJA—was set to expire. So all of us tax nerds, we were expecting, like, a huge drag-out fight over tax policy. And then it actually ended up being addressed in the reconciliation bill pretty quickly.
The way bigger fight was over Medicaid and SNAP and other poverty policies such as that. And the Child Tax Credit was resolved pretty easily. So that—I think all tax policy people were like, Huh. We really thought that would be a bigger fight than it was. But obviously I could not predict that the specific cuts to SNAP and Medicaid would be implemented.
But I wouldn’t say anything has really surprised me. And that’s down to stuff that I am less familiar with in terms of what I report on. Like, I don’t really report on foreign affairs that often. And so everything that’s been happening in terms of declaring war on Venezuelan drug dealers—that is really, really huge for the country and the world. But it’s hard to say I find it surprising.
Bacon: So two things I would say are, first, how aggressive he was against universities and law firms early on, and how willing they were to fold did surprise me a little bit. And the New York City race—I would’ve bet a lot of money, from January to April, that Cuomo would win until everyone possible jumped in. An American socialist was, in fact, not going to be elected mayor of the capital of capitalism. So that one did surprise me. It became more obvious at some point, but if I’m being honest, that was still a surprise to me.
Segers: You know what did actually surprise me is when Trump met with Zohran Mamdani in the White House. They vibed. Like, they really hit it off. I should not have been surprised because if there’s one thing Trump loves, it’s a hot winner. Zohran Mamdani is a hot winner. And Zohran, I think, has a level of charisma that I was not personally expecting. And seeing him win over someone who is also known for his kind of weird charisma—I thought that was really interesting to see, and not what I was expecting.
Bacon: So you wrote this piece about masculinity and authenticity that I thought was really important a few months ago. Go ahead and explain it from your point of view—what you wrote. I have some follow-up questions, but explain what you were trying to get at in the piece.
Segers: So I think something... let’s actually rewind a little bit. I can’t remember if I addressed this in the piece, but Trump has a very specific brand of masculinity. It’s very macho. Very men have one place, women have another place, and he has defeated female candidates for president. The only time he lost was to a man, right?
And with his choice of Vance, Vance also represents a very ascendant type of masculine consideration: “A true man is the head of a family,” right? And there are traditional gender roles that should be implemented. So on the Republican side, I think you have those various themes. But on the Democratic side, when we talk about authenticity—like, who do you think of as an authentic character? It’s usually a man. It’s usually a white man, and that’s why you’ve seen so many political candidates lately with their plaid and their rugged working-class job.
And the one that comes to me, who has been in a mess for the past couple of months, is Graham Plattner up in Maine. He’s like, “I’m a rough-and-tumble oyster farmer.” And meanwhile, Janet Mills, the governor of Maine, is a technocrat. And Susan Collins... I think it’s very significant that he is trying to beat a woman senator with this kind of persona.
And then whenever you have women trying to show they’re authentic, it’s not usually... they’re wearing yoga pants and talking about how difficult it is to, like, be a mom, ’cause they’re going to get judged in a way that men aren’t going to. So you see women candidates highlight their national security credentials, their military credentials, and just feel like they have to be playing a kind of boys’ game. So that’s a very, like, long-winded sort of overview, but that is the general gist.
Bacon: Let me come back; let me zone in a little bit. Let me say it more harshly or whatever, I guess. But I perceived it as a Graham Plattner [piece] because it was written in September, I think. And that was right when Graham Plattner had launched, but before it turned into what his tattoos are like. I think it was in that period before. So on some level, Plattner was being praised for being authentic, and Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill were being kind of critiqued for being wooden and so on.
And to me, Mikie Sherrill and Spanberger seemed like authentic people who happen to be maybe more polished, more establishment, more military, and I think they seem authentic to themselves. And Graham Plattner, I thought, was sort of on some level a play, a little bit of a character, but playing a character we are looking for. And that was—I’m worried, I guess I read your piece and then maybe my worry is: Does such “authenticity” point you away from Kamala Harris and toward white men cosplaying?
And if you look at Plattner’s actual background, he’s not from a poor family. He’s not really from a working-class family; I think he went to a private prep school. And so I worry the search for...
The Democrats are doing worse with male voters. That is true. They should be, if the goal is to find people that appeal to male voters; that’s an honest way to put it. But saying you need to be “more authentic” is kind of lying about this. But that was my concern: It’s like Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill seem perfectly authentic and for that matter, Kamala seemed perfectly authentic to me, but they just may not be as appealing to certain voters. Right?
Segers: Right. And I think that is—very, very eloquently—put the point of my article. Clearly you’ve read it more recently than I have; as you know, you write an article and then you’re like, What did that say? But I think all political personas are a performance.
Bacon: That’s true. But Zohran is very good at acting a certain way, right?
Segers: And so I think it’s about what kind of performance politicians believe voters want to see. Right? Which is kind of a tortured way of putting it. But right now, the kind of party strategists—the powers that be—believe that voters want to see rugged white men. And therefore, that’s why you’re seeing this crop of rugged white men candidates. And so then it kind of becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if you believe voters want to see this, then there will be more of them, and then just the cycle continues.
And I think you’re right that part of it is just that Democrats believe they can win back white men. And they believe that this is the way to do it. And I think there is a level, not of dishonesty when we talk about authenticity but we don’t talk about gender and we don’t talk about race, that means we’re not having the full conversation.
Bacon: And so I’ll finish by moving toward the presidential campaign a little bit—we’re sort of gradually stepping there. How do you put this in that context? Do we see… I don’t think of Gavin Newsom or J.B. Pritzker as being rugged, exactly. So how do you see this playing out going forward? Who appeals to the white guy, which I think is what’s going on here?
Segers: It’s interesting because no one would ever accuse J.B. Pritzker of being a rugged, working-class guy. But he does have something that Trump has, and that is this veneer of success. And Pritzker is crazy wealthy—he comes from an insanely rich family. And I think that is…
Bacon: So, like Trump. He didn’t really earn it. It’s not self-made.
Segers: He’s not self-made. It seems like he says what he means. And I think part of that is just the confidence that comes from being a rich white guy from birth. Like, there’s kind of an insulation there. But it is another form of masculinity—of, like, This is a rich, successful guy. I could be like that, even if it’s like, No, you weren’t born a billionaire.
There’s something aspirational about it that I think still appeals to people. And with Newsom, that brand of masculinity is very, like, California shiny polish. But there is still that sort of aspirational, wealthy element to it. So I guess the big takeaway here is that there are a lot of types of masculinity, and because of the way our society is structured, men always have the advantage. Like, if you have a super-rich woman, she is out of touch, right? You have a super-rich man, it’s like, Ooh, how did he get there? So it’s that kind of thing, I think.
Bacon: I guess Whitmer is not acting like someone who wants to run for president. I don’t think AOC is either. I’m struggling to think of who—not because I think there’s a lack of qualified women in the Democratic Party, but because I don’t feel like any of them are positioning themselves. By contrast, Shapiro and Gavin Newsom are running for president. Andy Beshear is running for president. They’re sort of running really hard right now, I would say.
Is this pervasive sense that we have to win the white guys so deep that the party is informally signaling: if you’re not white-guy-friendly—or really, if you’re not a white guy, [don’t run] in some ways?
Segers: I do think there may be that underlying message. I also think that, for their part, women politicians have seen what happens to women who run. And they’ve seen the way that women candidates are held to a higher level of scrutiny—the way the public just automatically assumes the worst of them. And talk all day about the flawed candidacy of Clinton and Harris and how they should have done X, Y, Z, and how they had all this baggage, and Harris wasn’t running until August and blah, blah, blah.
But when it comes down to it, the first time we saw two major-party nominees that were women, they were run down. I think a lot of women politicians are going to go, Why would I put myself through that? What is the benefit for me when running for president is incredibly hard? It costs a ton of money, and I’m going to be having to fight uphill the entire way.
And then being governor. I think I would never be a politician because it sucks. But if you have to be a politician, being governor is pretty sweet. You are the god-king of your personal fiefdom. And you have this level of power. That’s awesome.
So I never blame members of Congress when they leave to go be a governor. It’s like, yeah, of course you would. But if you’re Gretchen Whitmer, and maybe she doesn’t know what she’s going to do next, that’s when you start thinking about running for president. But, like, if you’ve got a pretty sweet job going on, then why sacrifice that so you can be absolutely battered for six months before losing?
Bacon: Well, that seems true and depressing, but probably true. What do you anticipate for 2026? I anticipate that Trump will get a little more unpopular. There’s probably a floor of 35 percent or so, but I think he’ll get more unpopular.
I think the Democrats will win the House unless the gerrymandering is really changed. The Democrats are big favorites to win the House. North Carolina is the Senate seat they might be very competitive in. I know we always say this, but Roy Cooper actually was the governor. Maine, I don’t know, because I can’t tell if Plattner is going to win the primary.
But I think you’ll see a narrow Senate majority for Democrats. So I think you’re going to see a pretty strong Democratic year, and I think you’re going to see more Republicans on Capitol Hill, governors, and at the state level criticizing Trump. And I think you’re going to see sort of a break from Trump.
Maybe not Bush 2006 levels, but something like this where the party is going to start looking out for itself a little more and Trump a little less. So that’s kind of what I think, but maybe that’s too optimistic. So we’ll see.
Segers: What I’m really interested to see is that we are going to begin to see some of the potential political impact of policy changes. You know, a lot of what passed in the reconciliation law over the summer doesn’t go into effect until after the midterms, and that’s very deliberate.
But we are going to be seeing some immediate impact. So SNAP work requirements are already in. We are seeing the impact if people drop their healthcare because they can’t afford the double or tripled, quadruple ACA marketplace options. What political impact is that going to have? I think that’s going to be a really interesting dynamic going into 2026.
One final thing I’ll say is: If the Supreme Court upholds that Trump can fire members of independent agencies and doesn’t carve out the Fed, and Trump fires Jerome Powell. If that happens, the economy is going to go into free fall. That’s going to be massive. Every single economist that I’ve talked to has told me that is going to be... if that happened, that would be very, very bad.
Bacon: Yeah, I guess I knew that. But I’m glad you sort of reminded me of how important that ruling is going to be.
Segers: I think if I had to guess, I would say the Supreme Court would probably be like, Trump can fire independent agencies—except the Fed; don’t touch the Fed.
That would be my guess. If they are not specific enough on that front, and if his advisers can’t convince him not to fire Jerome Powell, then I think that’ll be a really interesting thing to see.
Bacon: Okay. well thanks for joining me. I’ll end it there.
Segers: Good to see you.
